Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Taylor

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THE PRINCIPLES

OF SCIENTIFICMANAGEMENT

WIN3LOW

TAYLOR,



From the collection of the

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AJibrary

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San Francisco, California

2006



ThePrinciples of

Scientific Management



ThePrinciples of


BY

FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR, M.E., Sc.D.

PAST PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF

MECHANICAL ENGINEERS



COPYRIGHT, I9IIBY FREDERICK W. TAYLOR

THE PLIMPTON PRESS NORWOOD MASS. U.S.A.



INTRODUCTION

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, in his address to

the Governors at the White House, prophet-

ically remarked that "The conservation of our

national resources is only preliminary to the larger

question of national efficiency."

The whole country at once recognized the impor-

tance of conserving our material resources and a

large movement has been started which will be

effective in accomplishing this object. As yet,

however, we have but vaguely appreciated the

importance of "the larger question of increasing our

national efficiency."

We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers

going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into

the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in

sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which

go on every day through such of our acts as are

blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which

Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a lack of "national

efficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are

butvaguely appreciated.We can see and feel the waste of material things.

Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of

men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible

behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act

5



6 INTRODUCTION

of memory, an effort of the imagination. And for

this reason, even though our daily loss from this

source is greater than from our waste of material

things, the one has stirred us deeply, while the other

has moved us but little.

As yet there has been no public agitation for

"greater national efficiency," no meetings have been

called to consider how this is to be brought about.

And still there are signs that the need for greater

efficiency is widely felt.

The search for better, for more competent men,

from the presidents of our great companies down to

our household servants, was never more vigorous

than it is now. And more than ever before is the

demand for competent men in excess of the supply.

What we are all looking for, however, is the ready-

made, competent man; the man whom some one else

has trained. It is only when we fully realize that

our duty, as well as our opportunity, lies in system-

atically cooperating to train and to make this com-

petent man,instead of in

huntingfor a man whom

some one else has trained, that we shall be on the

road to national efficiency.

In the past the prevailing idea has been well

expressed in the saying that"Captains of industry

are born, not made"; and the theory has been that

if

one could getthe

right man, methods could besafely left to him. In the future it will be appreci-

ated that our leaders must be trained right as well

as born right, and that no great man can (with the

old system of personal management) hope to com-



INTRODUCTION 7

pete with a number of ordinary men who have been

properly organized so as efficiently to cooperate.

In the past the man has been first; in' the future

the system must be first. This in no sense, however,

implies that great men are not needed. On the

contrary, the first object of any good system must

be that of developing first-class men; and under

systematic management the best man rises to the

top more certainly and more rapidly than ever

before.

This paper has been written:

First. To point out, through a series of simple

illustrations, the great loss which the whole country

is suffering through inefficiency in almost all of our

daily acts.

Second. To try to convince the reader that the

remedy for this inefficiency lies in systematic man-

agement, rather than in searching for some unusual

or extraordinary man.

Third. To prove that the best management is a

true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules,

and principles, as a foundation. And further to

show that the fundamental principles of scientific

management are applicable to all kinds of human

activities, from our simplest individual acts to the

work of ourgreat corporations,

which call for the

most elaborate cooperation. And, briefly, through

a series of illustrations, to convince the reader that

whenever these principles are correctly applied,

results must follow which are truly astounding.

This paper was originally prepared for presenta-



8 INTRODUCTION

tion to The American Society of Mechanical Engi-

neers. The illustrations chosen are such as, it is

believed, will especially appeal to engineers and to

managers of industrial and manufacturing establish-

ments, and also quite as much to all of the men who

are working in these establishments. It is hoped,

however, that it will be clear to other readers that

the same principles can be applied with equal force

to all social activities: to the management of our

homes; the management of our farms; the manage-

ment of the business of our tradesmen, large and

small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions,

our universities, and our governmental departments.



The Principles of


CHAPTER I

FUNDAMENTALS OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

HPHE principal object of management should be*

to secure the maximum prosperity for the em-

ployer, coupledwith the maximum

prosperityfor

each employe.

The words"maximum prosperity" are used, in

their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends

for the company or owner, but the development of

every branch of the business to its highest state of

excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.In the same way maximum prosperity for each

employ^ means not only higher wages than are

usually received by men of his class, but, of more im-

portance still, it also means the development of each

man to his state of maximum efficiency, so that he

may be able to do, generally speaking, the highest

grade of work for which his natural abilities fit him,

and it further means giving him, when possible,

this class of work to do.

It would seem to be so self-evident that maxi-

9



10 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

mum prosperity for the employer, coupled with

maximum prosperity for the employ^, ought to be

the twoleading objects

of

management,that even

to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet

there is no question that, throughout the industrial

world, a large part of the organization of employers,

as well as employes, is for war rather than for peace,

and that perhaps the majority on either side do not

believe thatit is

possible so to arrange their mutualrelations that their interests become identical.

The majority of these men believe that the funda-

mental interests of employes and employers are

necessarily antagonistic. Scientific management, on

the contrary, has for its very foundation the firm

conviction that the true interests of the two are oneand the same; that prosperity for the employer

cannot exist through a long term of years unless it

is accompanied by prosperity for the employe, and

vice versa; and that it is possible to give the work-

man what he most wants high wages and the

employer what he wants a low labor cost for

his manufactures.

It is hoped that some at least of those who do not

sympathize with each of these objects may be led

to modify their views; that some employers, whose

attitude toward their workmen has been that of

trying to get the largest amount of work out of

them for the smallest possible wages, may be led to

see that a more liberal policy toward their men will

pay them better; and that some of those workmen

who begrudge a fair and even a large profit to their



FUNDAMENTALS OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 11

employers, and who feel that all of the fruits of their

labor should belong to them, and that those for

whom they work and the capital invested in the

business are entitled to little or nothing, may be

led to modify these views.

No one can be found who will deny that in the

case of any single individual the greatest prosperity

can exist only when that individual has reached his

highest state of efficiency; that is, when he is turning

out his largest daily output.

The truth of this fact is also perfectly clear in the

case of two men working together. To illustrate:

if you and your workman have become so skilful

that you and he together are making two pairs of

shoes in a day, while your competitor and his work-

man are making only one pair, it is clear that after

selling your two pairs of shoes you can pay your

workman much higher wages than your competitor

who produces only one pair of shoes is able to pay

his man, and that there will still be enough moneyleft over for you to have a larger profit than your

competitor.

In the case of a more complicated manufacturing

establishment, it should also be perfectly clear that

the greatest permanent prosperity for the workman,

coupledwith the

greatest prosperityfor the

employer,can be brought about only when the work of the

establishment is done with the smallest combined

expenditure of human effort, plus nature's resources,

plus the cost for the use of capital in the shape of

machines, buildings, etc. Or, to state the same




thing in a different way: that the greatest pros-

perity can exist only as the result of the greatest

possible productivity of the men and machines of the

establishment that is, when each man and each

machine are turning out the largest possible output;

because unless your men and your machines are

daily turning out more work than others around

you,

it is clear that

competitionwill

prevent yourpaying higher wages to your workmen than are paid

to those of your competitor. And what is true as to

the possibility of paying high wages in the case of

two companies competing close beside one another

is also true as to whole districts of the country and

even as to nations which are incompetition. In a

word, that maximum prosperity can exist only as

the result of maximum productivity. Later in this

paper illustrations will be given of several companies

which are earning large dividends and at the same

time paying from 30 per cent, to 100 per cent,

higher wages to their men than are paid to similarmen immediately around them, and with whose

employers they are in competition. These illustra-

tions will cover different types of work, from the

most elementary to the most complicated.

If the above reasoning is correct, it follows that

the most important object of both the workmenand the management should be the training and

development of each individual in the establishment,

so that he can do (at his fastest pace and with the

maximum of efficiency) the highest class of work for

which his natural abilities fit him.




These principles appear to be so self-evident

that

manymen may think it almost childish to

state them. Let us, however, turn to the facts, as

they actually exist in this country and in England.

The English and American peoples are the greatest

sportsmen in the world. Whenever an American

workman plays baseball, or an English workman

playscricket, it is safe to say that he strains

everynerve to secure victory for his side. He does his

very best to make the largest possible number of

runs. The universal sentiment is so strong that

any man who fails to give out all there is in him in

sport is branded as a "quitter," and treated with

contempt bythose who are around him.

When the same workman returns to work on the

following day, instead of using every effort to turn

out the largest possible amount of work, in a majority

of the cases this man deliberately plans to do as

little as he safely can to turn out far less work

than heis

well ableto

doin

many instances todo not more than one-third to one-half of a proper

day's work. And in fact if he were to do his best

to turn out his largest possible day's work, he would

be abused by his fellow-workers for so doing, even

more than if he had proved himself a "quitter"

in sport. Underworking, that is, deliberately work-ing slowly so as to avoid doing a full day's work,

"soldiering," as it is called in this country, "hang-

ing it out," as it is called in England, "ca canae,"

as it is called in Scotland, is almost universal in

industrial establishments, and prevails also to a




large extent in the building trades; and the writer

asserts without fear of contradiction that this con-

stitutes the greatest evil with which the work-

ing-people of both England and America are now

afflicted.

It will be shown later in this paper that doing

away with slow working and"soldiering" in all its

forms and so arranging the relations between em-

ployer and employe that each workman will work

to his very best advantage and at his best speed,

accompanied by the intimate cooperation with the

management and the help (which the workman should

receive) from the management, would result on the

average

in

nearly doubling

the

outputof each man

and each machine. What other reforms, amongthose which are being discussed by these two nations,

could do as much toward promoting prosperity,

toward the diminution of poverty, and the allevia-

tion of suffering? America and England have been

recently agitatedover such

subjectsas the

tariff,

the control of the large corporations on the one hand,

and of hereditary power on the other hand, and over

various more or less socialistic proposals for taxa-

tion, etc. On these subjects both peoples have been

profoundly stirred, and yet hardly a voice has been

raised to call attention to this vastly greater andmore important subject of

"soldiering," which di-

rectly and powerfully affects the wages, the prosper-

ity, and the life of almost every working-man, and

also quite as much the prosperity of every industrial

establishment in the nation.




The elimination of"soldiering

"and of the several

causes of slow working would so lower the cost of

production that both our home and foreign markets

would be greatly enlarged, and we could compete

on more than even terms with our rivals. It would

remove one of the fundamental causes for dull times,

for lack of employment, and for poverty, and there-

fore would have a more permanent and far-reaching

effect upon these misfortunes than any of the cura-

tive remedies that are now being used to soften their

consequences. It would insure higher wages and

make shorter working hours and better working and

home conditions possible.

Whyis it, then, in the face of the self-evident

fact that maximum prosperity can exist only as the

result of the determined effort of each workman to

turn out each day his largest possible day's work,

that the great majority of our men are deliberately

doing just the opposite, and that even when the men

have the best of intentions their work is in most

cases far from efficient?

There are three causes for this condition, which

may be briefly summarized as:

First. The fallacy, which has from time imme-

morial been almost universal among workmen, that

a material increase in the output of each manor each machine in the trade would result in the

end in throwing a large number of men out of work.

Second. The defective systems of managementwhich are in common use, and which make it neces-

sary for each workman to soldier, or work slowly,




in order that he may protect his own best in-

terests.

Third. The inefficient rule-of-thumb methods,which are still almost universal in all trades, and in

practising which our workmen waste a large part

of their effort.

This paper will attempt to show the enormous

gains which would result from the substitution by

our workmen of scientific for rule-of-thumb methods.To explain a little more fully these three causes:

First. The great majority of workmen still believe

that if they were to work at their best speed they

would be doing a great injustice to the whole trade

by throwing a lot of men out of work, and yet the

history of the development of each trade shows that

each improvement, whether it be the invention of a

new machine or the introduction of a better method,

which results in increasing the productive capacity

of the men in the trade and cheapening the costs,

instead of throwing men out of work make in the

end work for more men.

The cheapening of any article in common use

almost immediately results in a largely increased

demand for that article. Take the case of shoes,

for instance. The introduction of machinery for

doing every element of the work which was formerly

done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a

fraction of their former labor cost, and in selling

them so cheap that now almost every man, woman,

and child in the working-classes buys one or two

pairs of shoes per year, and wears shoes all the time,




whereas formerly each workman bought perhaps one

pairof shoes

everyfive

years,and went barefoot

most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or

as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of

the enormously increased output of shoes per work-

man, which has come with shoe machinery, the

demand for shoes has so increased that there are

relatively more men workingin

the shoe industrynow than ever before.

The workmen in almost every trade have before

them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because

they are ignorant of the history of their own trade

even, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did

before them, that it is against their best interests

for each man to turn out each day as much work

as possible.

Under this fallacious idea a large proportion of

the workmen of both countries each day deliberately

work slowly so as to curtail the output. Almost

every labor union has made, or is contemplating

making, rules which have for their object curtailing

the output of their members, and those men who

have the greatest influence with the working-people,

the labor leaders as well as many people with phil-

anthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily

spreading this fallacy and at the same tune telling

them that they are overworked.

A great deal has been and is being constantly

said about "sweat-shop" work and conditions. The

writer has great sympathy with those who are over-

worked, but on the whole a greater sympathy for




those who are under paid. For every individual,

however,who is

overworked,there are a hundred

who intentionally underwork greatly underwork

every day of their lives, and who for this reason

deliberately aid in establishing those conditions

which in the end inevitably result in low wages.

And yet hardly a single voice is being raised in an

endeavor to correctthis evil.

As engineers and managers, we are more inti-

mately acquainted with these facts than any other

class in the community, and are therefore best fitted

to lead in a movement to combat this fallacious idea

by educating not only the workmen but the whole

of the country as to the true facts. And yet we are

practically doing nothing in this direction, and are

leaving this field entirely in the hands of the labor

agitators (many of whom are misinformed and mis-

guided), and of sentimentalists who are ignorant as

to actual working conditions.

Second. As to the second cause for soldiering

the relations which exist between employers and

employes under almost all of the systems of manage-

ment which are in common use it is impossible

in a few words to make it clear to one not familiar

with this problem why it is that the ignorance of

employers as to the proper time in which work of

various kinds should be done makes it for the interest

of the workman to "soldier."

The writer therefore quotes herewith from a

paper read before The American Society of Mechan-

ical Engineers, in June, 1903, entitled "Shop Man-




agement," which it is hoped will explain fully this

cause for soldiering:

"This loafing or soldiering proceeds from two

causes. First, from the natural instinct and tendency

of men to take it easy, which may be called natural

soldiering. Second, from more intricate second

thought and reasoning caused by their relations

with other men, which may be called systematic

soldiering."There is no question that the tendency of the

average man (in all walks of life) is toward working

at a slow, easy gait, and that it is only after a good

deal of thought and observation on his part or as a

result of example, conscience, or external pressure

that he takes a more rapid pace."There are, of course, men of unusual energy,

vitality, and ambition who naturally choose the

fastest gait, who set up their own standards, and

who work hard, even though it may be against their

best interests. But these few uncommon men only

serve by forming a contrast to emphasize the ten-

dency of the average.

"This common tendency to Hake it easy' is

greatly increased by bringing a number of men

together on similar work and at a uniform standard

rate of pay by the day.

"Under this plan the better men gradually but

surely slow down their gait to that of the poor-

est and least efficient. When a naturally ener-

getic man works for a few days beside a lazy

one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable.




'Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow

getsthe same

paythat I do and does

onlyhalf as

much work?'

"A careful time study of men working under these

conditions will disclose facts which are ludicrous as

well as pitiable.

"To illustrate: The writer has timed a naturally

energetic workman who,while

goingand

comingfrom work, would walk at a speed of from three to

four miles per hour, and not infrequently trot home

after a day's work. On arriving at his work he

would immediately slow down to a speed of about

one mile an hour. When, for example, wheeling a

loaded wheelbarrow, he would go at a good fast paceeven up hill in order to be as short a time as possible

under load, and immediately on the return walk

slow down to a mile an hour, improving every oppor-

tunity for delay short of actually sitting down.

In order to be sure not to do more than his lazy

neighbor, he would actually tire himself in his

effort to go slow.

"These men were working under a foreman of

good reputation and highly thought of by his

employer, who, when his attention was called to

this state of things, answered: 'Well, I can keep

them from sitting down, but the devil can't makethem get a move on while they are at work/

"The natural laziness of men is serious, but by

far the greatest evil from which both workmen and

employers are suffering is the systematic soldiering

which is almost universal under all of the ordinary




schemes of management and which results from a

careful study on the part of the workmen of whatwill promote their best interests.

"The writer was much interested recently in hearing

one small but experienced golf caddy boy of twelve

explaining to a green caddy, who had shown special

energy and interest, the necessity of going slow and

lagging behind his man when he came up to the ball,

showing him that since they were paid by the hour,

the faster they went the less money they got, and

finally telling him that if he went too fast the other

boys would give him a licking.

"This represents a type of systematic soldiering

which is not, however, very serious, since it is donewith the knowledge of the employer, who can quite

easily break it up if he wishes.

"The greater part of the systematic soldiering,

however, is done by the men with the deliberate

object of keeping their employers ignorant of how

fast work can be done.

"So universal is soldiering for this purpose that

hardly a competent workman can be found in a

large establishment, whether he works by the day

or on piece work, contract work, or under any of

the ordinary systems, who does not devote a con-

siderable part of his time to studying just how slow

he can work and still convince his employer that he

is going at a good pace.

"The causes for this are, briefly, that practically

all employers determine upon a maximum sum

which they feel it is right for each of their classes




of employees to earn per day, whether their men

work bythe

dayor

piece."Each workman soon finds out about what this

figure is for his particular case, and he also realizes

that when his employer is convinced that a man is

capable of doing more work than he has done, he

will find sooner or later some way of compelling him

to do it withlittle

or noincrease of

pay."Employers derive their knowledge of how much

of a given class of work can be done in a day from

either their own experience, which has frequently

grown hazy with age, from casual and unsystematic

observation of their men, or at best from records

which are kept, showing the quickest time in whicheach job has been done. In many cases the employer

will feel almost certain that a given job can be done

faster than it has been, but he rarely cares to take

the drastic measures necessary to force men to do it

in the quickest time, unless he has an actual record

proving conclusively how fast the work can be done.

"It evidently becomes for each man's interest,

then, to see that no job is done faster than it has

been in the past. The younger and less experienced

men are taught this by their elders, and all possible

persuasion and social pressure is brought to bear

upon the greedy and selfish men to keep them from

making new records which result in temporarily

increasing their wages, while all those who come

after them are made to work harder for the same

old pay.

"Under the best day work of the ordinary type,




when accurate records are kept of the amount of

work doneby

each man and of hisefficiency,

and

when each man's wages are raised as he improves,

and those who fail to rise to a certain standard are

discharged and a fresh supply of carefully selected

men are given work in their places, both the natural

loafing and systematic soldiering can be largely

broken up. This can only be done, however, whenthe men are thoroughly convinced that there is no

intention of establishing piece work even in the

remote future, and it is next to impossible to make

men believe this when the work is of such a nature

that they believe piece work to be practicable. In

most cases their fear of making a record which will

be used as a basis for piece work will cause them to

soldier as much as they dare.

"It is, however, under piece work that the art

of systematic soldiering is thoroughly developed;

after a workman has had the price per piece of the

work he is doing lowered two or three times as aresult of his having worked harder and increased

his output, he is likely entirely to lose sight of his

employer's side of the case and become imbued with

a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldier-

ing can prevent it. Unfortunately for the character

of the workman, soldiering involves a deliberate

attempt to mislead and deceive his employer, and

thus upright and straightforward workmen are com-

pelled to become more or less hypocritical. The

employer is soon looked upon as an antagonist, if

not an enemy, and the mutual confidence which




should exist between a leader and his men, the

enthusiasm, the feeling that they are all working

for the same end and will share in the results is

entirely lacking.

"The feeling of antagonism under the ordinary

piece-work system becomes in many cases so marked

on the part of the men that any proposition made

by their employers, however reasonable, is looked

upon with suspicion, and soldiering becomes such a

fixed habit that men will frequently take pains to

restrict the product of machines which they are

running when even a large increase in output would

involve no more work on their part."

Third. As to the third cause for slow work, con-

siderable space will later in this paper be devoted

to illustrating the great gain, both to employers

and employes, which results from the substitution

of scientific for rule-of-thumb methods in even the

smallest details of the work of every trade. The

enormoussaving

of time and therefore increase in

the output which it is possible to effect through

eliminating unnecessary motions and substituting

fast for slow and inefficient motions for the men

working in any of our trades can be fully realized

only after one has personally seen the improvement

which results from athorough

motion and timestudy,

made by a competent man.

To explain briefly: owing to the fact that the

workmen in all of our trades have been taught the

details of their work by observation of those immedi-

ately around them, there are many different ways in




common use for doing the same thing, perhaps forty,

fifty, or a hundred ways of doing each act in each

trade, and for the same reason there is a great

variety in the implements used for each class of

work. Now, among the various methods and

implements used in each element of each trade

there is always one method and one implement

which is

quickerand better than

anyof the rest.

And this one best method and best implement can

only be discovered or developed through a scientific

study and analysis of all of the methods and imple-

ments in use, together with accurate, minute, motion

and time study. This involves the gradual substi-

tution of science for rule of thumbthroughout

the

mechanic arts.

This paper will show that the underlying phi-

losophy of all of the old systems of management in

common use makes it imperative that each work-

man shall be left with the final responsibility for

doing his job practically as he thinks best, withcomparatively little help and advice from the

management. And it will also show that because

of this isolation of workmen, it is in most cases

impossible for the men working under these systems

to do their work in accordance with the rules and

laws of a science or art, even where one exists.

The writer asserts as a general principle (and he

proposes to give illustrations tending to prove the

fact later in this paper) that in almost all of the

mechanic arts the science which underlies each act

of each workman is so great and amounts to so much




that the workman who is best suited to actually

doing the work is incapable of fully understanding

this science, without the guidance and help of those

who are working with him or over him, either through

lack of education or through insufficient mental

capacity. In order that the work may be done in

accordance with scientific laws, it is necessary that

there shall be a far more equal division of the respon-

sibility between the management and the workmenthan exists under any of the ordinary types of

management. Those in the management whose

duty it is to develop this science should also guide

and help the workman in working under it, and

should assume a much larger share of the respon-

sibility for results than under usual conditions is

assumed by the management.

The body of this paper will make it clear that, to

work according to scientific laws, the managementmust take over and perform much of the work which

is now left to the men; almost every act of the work-

man should be preceded by one or more preparatory

acts of the management which enable him to do his

work better and quicker than he otherwise could.

And each man should daily be taught by and receive

the most friendly help from those who are over him,

instead of being, at the one extreme, driven or

coerced by his bosses, and at the other left to his

own unaided devices.

This close, intimate, personal cooperation between

the management and the men is of the essence of

modern scientific or task management.




It will be shown by a series of practical illustra-

tions that, through this friendly cooperation, namely,through sharing equally in every day's burden, all

of the great obstacles (above described) to obtain-

ing the maximum output for each man and each

machine in the establishment are swept away. The

30 per cent, to 100 per cent, increase in wages which

the workmen are able to earn beyond what theyreceive under the old type of management, coupled

with the daily intimate shoulder to shoulder contact

with the management, entirely removes all cause for

soldiering. And in a few years, under this system,

the workmen have before them the object lesson

of seeing that a great increase in the output per manresults in giving employment to more men, instead

of throwing men out of work, thus completely eradi-

cating the fallacy that a larger output for each man

will throw other men out of work.

It is the writer's judgment, then, that while much

can be done and should be done by writing and talk-

ing toward educating not only workmen, but all

classes in the community, as to the importance of

obtaining the maximum output of each man and

each machine, it is only through the adoption of

modern scientific management that this great prob-

lem can be finally solved. Probably most of the

readers of this paper will say that all of this is mere

theory. On the contrary, the theory, or philosophy,

of scientific management is just beginning to be

understood, whereas the management itself has

been a gradual evolution, extending over a period




of nearly thirty years. And during this time the

employes of one company after another, including a

large range and diversity of industries, have grad-

ually changed from the ordinary to the scientific

type of management. At least 50,000 workmen in

the United States are now employed under this

system; and they are receiving from 30 per cent,

to 100 per cent, higher wages daily than are paid

to men of similar caliber with whom they are sur-

rounded, while the companies employing them are

more prosperous than ever before. In these com-

panies the output, per man and per machine, has

on an average been doubled. During all these

years there has never been a single strike amongthe men working under this system. In place of

the suspicious watchfulness and the more or less

open warfare which characterizes the ordinary types

of management, there is universally friendly cooper-

ation between the management and the men.

Several papers have been written, describing the

expedients which have been adopted and the details

which have been developed under scientific manage-

ment and the steps to be taken in changing from

the ordinary to the scientific type. But unfortu-

nately most of the readers of these papers have

mistaken the mechanism for the true essence. Sci-

entific management fundamentally consists of certain

broad general principles, a certain philosophy, which

can be applied in many ways, and a description of

what any one man or men may believe to be the

best mechanism for applying these general principles




should in no way be confused with the principles

themselves.

It is not here claimed that any single panacea

exists for all of the troubles of the working-people

or of employers. As long as some people are born

lazy or inefficient, and others are born greedy and

brutal, as long as vice and crime are with us, just

so longwill

acertain

amountof

poverty, misery, andunhappiness be with us also. No system of manage-

ment, no single expedient within the control of any

man or any set of men can insure continuous pros-

perity to either workmen or employers. Prosperity

depends upon so many factors entirely beyond the

control of any one set of men, any state, or evenany one country, that certain periods will inevitably

come when both sides must suffer, more or less.

It is claimed, however, that under scientific manage-

ment the intermediate periods will be far more

prosperous, far happier, and more free from discord

and dissension. And also, that the periods will befewer, shorter and the suffering less. And this will

be particularly true in any one town, any one section

of the country, or any one state which first substi-

tutes the principles of scientific management for the

rule of thumb.

That these principles are certain to come into

general use practically throughout the civilized

world, sooner or later, the writer is profoundly con-

vinced, and the sooner they come the better for all

the people.



CHAPTER II

THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

^PHE writer has found that there are three ques-

tions uppermost in the minds of men when they

become interested in scientific management.

First. Wherein do the principles of scientific man-

agement differ essentially from those of ordinary

management?

Second. Why are better results attained under

scientific management than under the other types?

Third. Is not the most important problem that

of getting the right man at the head of the company?

And if you have the right man cannot the choice

of the type of management be safely left to him?

One of the principal objects of the following pages

will be to give a satisfactory answer to these ques-

tions.

THE FINEST TYPE OF ORDINARY MANAGEMENT

Before starting to illustrate the principles of scien-

tific management, or "task management" as it is

briefly called, it seems desirable to outline what the

writer believes will be recognized as the best type of

management which is in common use. This is done

so that the great difference between the best of the

30



THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 31

ordinary management and scientific management

maybe

fully appreciated.In an industrial establishment which employs say

from 500 to 1000 workmen, there will be found in

many cases at least twenty to thirty different trades.

The workmen in each of these trades have had their

knowledge handed down to them by word of mouth,

throughthe

many yearsin which their trade

hasbeen developed from the primitive condition, in

which our far-distant ancestors each one practised

the rudiments of many different trades, to the

present state of great and growing subdivision of

labor, in which each man specializes upon some com-

paratively small class of work.The ingenuity of each generation has developed

quicker and better methods for doing every element

of the work in every trade. Thus the methods which

are now in use may in a broad sense be said to be

an evolution representing the survival of the fittest

and best of the ideas which have been developedsince the starting of each trade. However, while this

is true in a broad sense, only those who are inti-

mately acquainted with each of these trades are fully

aware of the fact that in hardly any element of anytrade is there uniformity in the methods which are

used. Instead of having only one way which is

generally accepted as a standard, there are in daily

use, say, fifty or a hundred different ways of doingeach element of the work. And a little thoughtwill make it clear that this must inevitably be the

case, since our methods have been handed down from




man to man by word of mouth, or have, in most

cases, been almost unconsciously learned through

personal observation. Practically in no instances

have they been codified or systematically analyzed

or described. The ingenuity and experience of each

generation of each decade, even, have without

doubt handed over better methods to the next.

This mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge

may be said to be the principal asset or possession

of every tradesman. Now, in the best of the ordinary

types of management, the managers recognize frankly

the fact that the 500 or 1000 workmen, included in

the twenty to thirty trades, who are under them,

possess

this mass of traditional

knowledge,a

largepart of which is not in the possession of the manage-

ment. The management, of course, includes fore-

men and superintendents, who themselves have been

in most cases first-class workers at their trades.

And yet these foremen and superintendents know,

better than any one else,that their

own knowledgeand personal skill falls far short of the combined

knowledge and dexterity of all the workmen under

them. The most experienced managers therefore

frankly place before their workmen the problem of

doing the work in the best and most economical

way. They recognize the task before them as thatof inducing each workman to use his best endeavors,

his hardest work, all his traditional knowledge, his

skill, his ingenuity, and his good-will in a word,

his"initiative," so as to yield the largest possible

return to his employer. The problem before the




management, then, may be briefly said to be that

of

obtaining

the best initiative of every workman.

And the writer uses the word "initiative" in its

broadest sense, to cover all of the good qualities

sought for from the men.

On the other hand, no intelligent manager would

hope to obtain in any full measure the initiative of

his workmen unless he felt that he wasgiving

them

something more than they usually receive from their

employers. Only those among the readers of this

paper who have been managers or who have worked

themselves at a trade realize how far the average

workman falls short of giving his employer his full

initiative.It is well within the

markto state that

in nineteen out of twenty industrial establishments

the workmen believe it to be directly against their

interests to give their employers their best initiative,

and that instead of working hard to do the largest

possible amount of work and the best quality of work

for their employers, they deliberately work as slowlyas they dare while they at the same time try to make

those over them believe that they are working fast.1

The writer repeats, therefore, that in order to

have any hope of obtaining the initiative of his

workmen the manager must give some special

incentive to his men beyond that which is given tothe average of the trade. This incentive can be

given in several different ways, as, for example,

1 The writer has tried to make the reason for this unfortunate state of

things clear in a paper entitled "Shop Management," read before the

American Society of Mechanical Engineers."




the hope of rapid promotion or advancement;

higher wages, either in the form of generous piece-

work prices or of a premium or bonus of some kind

for good and rapid work; shorter hours of labor;

better surroundings and working conditions than are

ordinarily given, etc., and, above all, this special

incentive should be accompanied by that personal

consideration for, and friendly contact with, his

workmen which comes only from a genuine and

kindly interest in the welfare of those under him.

It is only by giving a special inducement or"incen-

tive" of this kind that the employer can hope

even approximately to get the "initiative" of his

workmen. Under the ordinary type of manage-

ment the necessity for offering the workman a

special inducement has come to be so generally

recognized that a large proportion of those most

interested in the subject look upon the adoption

of some one of the modern schemes for paying men

(such as piece work, the premium plan, or the

bonus plan, for instance) as practically the whole

system of management. Under scientific manage-

ment, however, the particular pay system which is

adopted is merely one of the subordinate elements.

Broadly speaking, then, the best type of manage-

ment in ordinary use may be defined as manage-

ment in which the workmen give their best initiative

and in return receive some special incentive from

their employers. This type of management will be

referred to as the management ofuinitiative and

incentive" in contradistinction to scientific manage-




ment, or task management, with which it is to be

compared.The writer hopes that the management of "initia-

tive and incentive" will be recognized as representing

the best type in ordinary use, and in fact he believes

that it will be hard to persuade the average mana-

ger that anything better exists in the whole field than

this type. The task which the writer has before him,then, is the difficult one of trying to prove in a

thoroughly convincing way that there is another

type of management which is not only better but

overwhelmingly better than the management of

"initiative and incentive."

The universal prejudice in favor of the manage-ment of "initiative and incentive" is so strong that

no mere theoretical advantages which can be pointed

out will be likely to convince the average manager

that any other system is better. It will be upon a

series of practical illustrations of the actual working

of the two systems that the writer will depend in

his efforts to prove that scientific management is so

greatly superior to other types. Certain elementary

principles, a certain philosophy, will however be

recognized as the essence of that which is being illus-

trated in all of the practical examples which will be

given. And the broad principles in which the scien-

tific system differs from the ordinary or "rule-of-

thumb" system are so simple in their nature that it

seems desirable to describe them before starting with

the illustrations.

Under the old type of management success depends




almost entirely upon getting the"initiative" of the

workmen, and it is indeed a rare case in which this

initiative is really attained. Under scientific man-

agement the "initiative" of the workmen (that is,

their hard work, their good-will, and their ingenuity)

is obtained with absolute uniformity and to a greater

extent than is possible under the old system; and in

addition to this improvement on the part of the men,the managers assume new burdens, new duties, and

responsibilities never dreamed of in the past. The

managers assume, for instance, the burden of gather-

ing together all of the traditional knowledge which

in the past has been possessed by the workmen and

then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this

knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae which are im-

mensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily

work. In addition to developing a science in this way,

the management take on three other types of duties

which involve new and heavy burdens for themselves.

These new duties are grouped under four heads:

First. They develop a science for each element

of a man's work, which replaces the old rule-of-

thumb method.

Second. They scientifically select and then train,

teach, and develop the workman, whereas in the

pasthe chose his own work and trained himself as

best he could.

Third. They heartily cooperate with the men so

as to insure all of the work being done in accord-

ance with the principles of the science which has

been developed.




Fourth. There is an almost equal division of the

work and the responsibility between the management

and the workmen. The management take over all

work for which they are better fitted than the work-

men, while in the past almost all of the work and

the greater part of the responsibility were thrown

upon the men.

It is this combination of the initiative of the work-

men, coupled with the new types of work done bythe management, that makes scientific management

so much more efficient than the old plan.

Three of these elements exist in many cases, under

the management of "initiative and incentive," in a

small and rudimentary way, but they are, under this

management, of minor importance, whereas under

scientific management they form the very essence of

the whole system.

The fourth of these elements, "an almost equal

division of the responsibility between the manage-

ment and the

workmen," requiresfurther

explana-tion. The philosophy of the management of "initia-

tive and incentive" makes it necessary for each

workman to bear almost the entire responsibility

for the general plan as well as for each detail of his

work, and in many cases for his implements as well.

In addition to this hemust do

all ofthe actual

physical labor. The development of a science, on

the other hand, involves the establishment of many

rules, laws, and formulae which replace the judgment

of the individual workman and which can be effect-

ively used only after having been systematically




recorded, indexed, etc. The practical use of scientific

data also calls for a room in which to keep the books,

records, 1 etc., and a desk for the planner to work at.

Thus all of the planning which under the old system

was done by the workman, as a result of his personal

experience, must of necessity under the new system

be done by the management in accordance with the

laws of the science; because even if the workman

was well suited to the development and use of

scientific data, it would be physically impossible

for him to work at his machine and at a desk at the

same time. It is also clear that in most cases one

type of man is needed to plan ahead and an entirely

different type to execute the work.

The man in the planning room, whose specialty

under scientific management is planning ahead, in-

variably finds that the work can be done better and

more economically by a subdivision of the labor;

each act of each mechanic, for example, should

be preceded by various preparatory acts done byother men. And all of this involves, as we have

said, "an almost equal division of the responsi-

bility and the work between the management and

the workman."

To summarize: Under the management of "initia-

tive and incentive" practically the whole problem

is "up to the workman," while under scientific

management fully one-half of the problem is "upto the management."

1 For example, the records containing the data used under scientific

management in an ordinary machine-shop fill thousands of pages.




Perhaps the most prominent single element in

modern scientific management is the task idea.

The work of every workman is fully planned out

by the management at least one day in advance,

and each man receives in most cases complete writ-

ten instructions, describing in detail the task which

he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be

used in doing the work. And the work planned in

advance in this way constitutes a task which is to

be solved, as explained above, not by the workman

alone, but in almost all cases by the joint effort

of the workman and the management. This task

specifies not only what is to be done but how it is

to be done and the exact time allowed for

doingit.

And whenever the workman succeeds in doing his

task right, and within the time limit specified, he

receives an addition of from 30 per cent, to 100

per cent, to his ordinary wages. These tasks are

carefully planned, so that both good and careful

work are called for in their

performance,but it

should be distinctly understood that in no case is

the workman called upon to work at a pace which

would be injurious to his health. The task is always

so regulated that the man who is well suited to his

job will thrive while working at this rate during

a long termof

years and grow happier and moreprosperous, instead of being overworked. Scientific

management consists very largely in preparing for

and carrying out these tasks.

The writer is fully aware that to perhaps most

of the readers of this paper the four elements




which differentiate the new management from the

old will at first appear to be merely high-sounding

phrases; and he would again repeat that he has no

idea of convincing the reader of their value merely

through announcing their existence. His hope of

carrying conviction rests upon demonstrating the

tremendous force and effect of these four elements

through a series of practical illustrations. It will

be shown, first, that they can be applied absolutely

to all classes of work, from the most elementary to

the most intricate; and second, that when they are

applied, the results must of necessity be overwhelm-

ingly greater than those which it is possible to attain

under the management of initiative and incentive.

The first illustration is that of handling pig iron,

and this work is chosen because it is typical of

perhaps the crudest and most elementary form of

labor which is performed by man. This work is

done by men with no other implements than their

hands. The pig-iron handler stoops down, picks

up a pig weighing about 92 pounds, walks for a few

feet or yards and then drops it on to the ground or

upon a pile. This work is so crude and elementary

in its nature that the writer firmly believes that it

would be possible to train an intelligent gorilla so as

to become a more efficient pig-iron handler than any

man can be. Yet it will be shown that the science

of handling pig iron is so great and amounts to

so much that it is impossible for the man who is

best suited to this type of work to understand the

principles of this science, or even to work in accord-




ance with these principles without the aid of a man

better educated than he is. And the further illustra-

tions to be given will make it clear that in almost

all of the mechanic arts the science which underlies

each workman's act is so great and amounts to so

much that the workman who is best suited actually

to do the work is incapable (either through lack of

education or through insufficient mental capacity)

of understanding this science. This is announced

as a general principle, the truth of which will become

apparent as one illustration after another is given.

After showing these four elements in the handling

of pig iron, several illustrations will be given of their

application to different kinds of work in the field

of the mechanic arts, at intervals in a rising scale,

beginning with the simplest and ending with the

more intricate forms of labor.

One of the first pieces of work undertaken by

us, when the writer started to introduce scientific

managementinto the Bethlehem Steel

Company,was to handle pig iron on task work. The opening

of the Spanish War found some 80,000 tons of pig

iron placed in small piles in an open field adjoining

the works. Prices for pig iron had been so low that

it could not be sold at a profit, and it therefore had

been stored. With the

openingof the

SpanishWar

the price of pig iron rose, and this large accumulation

of iron was sold. This gave us a good opportunity

to show the workmen, as well as the owners and

managers of the works, on a fairly large scale the

advantages of task work over the old-fashioned day




work and piece work, in doing a very elementary

class of work.

The Bethlehem Steel Company had five blast

furnaces, the product of which had been handled

by a pig-iron gang for many years. This gang, at

this time, consisted of about 75 men. They were

good, average pig-iron handlers, were under an

excellent foreman who himself had been a pig-iron

handler, and the work was done, on the whole,

about as fast and as cheaply as it was anywhere

else at that time.

A railroad switch was run out into the field, right

along the edge of the piles of pig iron. An inclined

plank was placed against the side of a car, and each

man picked up from his pile a pig of iron weighing

about 92 pounds, walked up the inclined plank and

dropped it on the end of the car.

We found that this gang were loading on the

average about 12| long tons per man per day.

We were surprised to find, after studying the matter,

that a first-class pig-iron handler ought to handle

between 47 l and 48 long tons per day, instead of

12i tons. This task seemed to us so very large

that we were obliged to go over our work several

times before we were absolutely sure that we were

right. Once we were sure, however, that 47 tons

was a proper day's work for a first-class pig-iron

handler, the task which faced us as managers under

the modern scientific plan was clearly before us.

It was our duty to see that the 80,000 tons of pig

1 See foot-note at foot of page 60.




iron was loaded on to the cars at the rate of 47 tons

per man per day, in place of 12| tons, at which rate

the work was then being done. And it was further

our duty to see that this work was done without

bringing on a strike among the men, without any

quarrel with the men, and to see that the men were

happier and better contented when loading at the

new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading at

the old rate of 12i tons.

Our first step was the scientific selection of the

workman. In dealing with workmen under this

type of management, it is an inflexible rule to talk

to and deal with only one man at a time, since each

workman has his own special abilities and limita-

tions, and since we are not dealing with men in

masses, but are trying to develop each individual

man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity.

Our first step was to find the proper workman to

begin with. We therefore carefully watched and

studied these 75 men for three or four days, at the

end of which time we had picked out four men

who appeared to be physically able to handle

pig iron at the rate of 47 tons per day. A careful

study was then made of each of these men. Welooked up their history as far back as practicable and

thorough inquirieswere made as to the

character,habits, and the ambition of each of them. Finally

we selected one from among the four as the most,

likely man to start with. He was a little Pennsyl-

vania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back

home for a mile or so after his work in the evening.




about as fresh as he was when he came trotting down

to work in the morning. We found that upon

wages of $1.15 a day he had succeeded in buying a

small plot of ground, and that he was engaged in

putting up the walls of a little house for himself

in the morning before starting to work and at night

after leaving. He also had the reputation of being

exceedingly "close," that is, of placing a very high

value on a dollar. As one man whom we talked to

about him said, "A penny looks about the size of a

cart-wheel to him." This man we will call Schmidt.

The task before us, then, narrowed itself down to

getting Schmidt to handle 47 tons of pig iron per

day and making him glad to do it. This was done

as follows. Schmidt was called out from among the

gang of pig-iron handlers and talked to somewhat

in this way:

"Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?"

"Veil, I don't know vat you mean."" Oh yes, you do. What I want to know is whether

you are a high-priced man or not."

"Veil, I don't know vat you mean."

"Oh, come now, you answer my questions. What

I want to find out is whether you are a high-priced

man or one of these cheap fellows here. What I

want to find out is whetheryou

want to earn $1.85

a day or whether you are satisfied with $1.15, just

the same as all those cheap fellows are getting."

"Did I vant $1.85 a day? Vas dot a high-priced

man? Veil, yes, I vas a high-priced man."

"Oh, you're aggravating me. Of course you want




$1.85 a day every one wants it! You know per-

fectly well that that has verylittle

to do with yourbeing a high-priced man. For goodness' sake answer

my questions, and don't waste any more of my time.

Now come over here. You see that pile of pig

iron?"

"Yes."

"You see that car?""Yes."

"Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will

load that pig iron on that car to-morrow for $1.85.

Now do wake up and answer my question. Tell

me whether you are a high-priced man or not."

"Veil did I got $1.85 for loading dot pig iron

on dot car to-morrow?"

"Yes, of course you do, and you get $1.85 for

loading a pile like that every day right through the

year. That is what a high-priced man does, and

you know it just as well as I do."

"Veil, dot's all right. I could load dot pig iron

on the car to-morrow for $1.85, and I get it every day,

don't I?"

"Certainly you do certainly you do."

"Veil, den, I vas a high-priced man."

"Now, hold on, hold on. You know just as well

as I do that a high-priced man has to do exactly as

he's told from morning till night. You have seen

this man here before, haven't you?"

"No, I never saw him."

"Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will do

exactly as this man tells you to-morrow, from morn-




ing till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig

and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when

he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down.

You do that right straight through the day. And

what's more, no back talk. Now a high-priced

man does just what he's told to do, and no back

talk. Do you understand that? When this man

tells you to walk, you walk; when he tells

youto

sit down, you sit down, and you don't talk back at

him. Now you come on to work here to-morrow

morning and I'll know before night whether you are

really a high-priced man or not."

This seems to be rather rough talk. And indeed

it would be if

appliedto an educated

mechanic,or

even an intelligent laborer. With a man of the

mentally sluggish type of Schmidt it is appropriate

and not unkind, since it is effective in fixing his

attention on the high wages which he wants and

away from what, if it were called to his attention,

heprobably

would considerimpossibly hard work.

What would Schmidt's answer be if he were talked

to in a manner which is usual under the manage-

ment of"initiative and incentive"? say, as follows:

"Now, Schmidt, you are a first-class pig-iron

handler and know your business well. You have

been handling at the rate of 12J tons per day. Ihave given considerable study to handling pig iron,

and feel sure that you could do a much larger day's

work than you have been doing. Now don't you

think that if you really tried you could handle 47

tons of pig iron per day, instead of 12| tons?"




What do you think Schmidt's answer would be

to this?

Schmidt started to work, and all day long, and

at regular intervals, was told by the man who stood

over him with a watch, "Now pick up a pig and

walk. Now sit down and rest. Now walk now

rest," etc. He worked when he was told to work,

and rested

whenhe was told to

rest,and at half-

past five in the afternoon had his 47i tons loaded

on the car. And he practically never failed to work

at this pace and do the task that was set him during

the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem.

And throughout this time he averaged a little more

than $1.85 per day, whereas before he had neverreceived over $1.15 per day, which was the ruling

rate of wages at that time in Bethlehem. That

is, he received 60 per cent, higher wages than were

paid to other men who were not working on task

work. One man after another was picked out and

trained to handle pig iron at the rate of 471 tons

per day until all of the pig iron was handled at

this rate, and the men were receiving 60 per cent,

more wages than other workmen around them.

The writer has given above a brief description of

three of the four elements which constitute the

essence of scientific management: first, the careful

selection of the workman, and, second and third,

the method of first inducing and then training and

helping the workman to work according to the

scientific method. Nothing has as yet been said

about the science of handling pig iron. The writer




trusts, however, that before leaving this illustra-

tion the reader will be thoroughly convinced that

there is a science of handling pig iron, and further

that this science amounts to so much that the manwho is suited to handle pig iron cannot possibly

understand it, nor even work in accordance with the

laws of this science, without the help of those who

are over him.

The writer came into the machine-shop of the

Midvale Steel Company in 1878, after having served

an apprenticeship as a pattern-maker and as a

machinist. This was close to the end of the long

period of depression following the panic of 1873,

and business was so

poorthat it was

impossiblefor

many mechanics to get work at their trades. For

this reason he was obliged to start as a day laborer

instead of working as a mechanic. Fortunately for

him, soon after he came into the shop the clerk of

the shop was found stealing. There was no one else

available, and so, having more education [than theother laborers (since he had been prepared for col-

lege) he was given the position of clerk. Shortly

after this he was given work as a machinist in run-

ning one of the lathes, and, as he turned out rather

more work than other machinists were doing on

similar lathes, after several months was made gang-boss over the lathes.

Almost all of the work of this shop had been done

on piece work for several years. As was usual

then, and in fact as is still usual in most of the shops

in this country, the shop was really run by the work-




men, and not by the bosses. The workmen together

had carefully planned justhow fast each

jobshould

be done, and they had set a pace for each machine

throughout the shop, which was limited to about

one-third of a good day's work. Every new work-

man who came into the shop was told at once by

the other men exactly how much of each kind of

work he was to do, and unless he obeyed thesein-

structions he was sure before long to be driven out

of the place by the men.

As soon as the writer was made gang-boss, one

after another of the men came to him and talked

somewhat as follows:

"Now, Fred, we're very glad to see that you'vebeen made gang-boss. You know the game all right,

and we're sure that you're not likely to be a piece-

work hog. You come along with us, and every-

thing will be all right, but if you try breaking any

of these rates you can be mighty sure that we'll

throw you over the fence."

The writer told them plainly that he was now

working on the side of the management, and that

he proposed to do whatever he could to get a fair

day's work out of the lathes. This immediately

started a war; in most cases a friendly war, because

the men who were under him were his personal

friends, but none the less a war, which as time

went on grew more and more bitter. The writer

used every expedient to make them do a fair day's

work, such as discharging or lowering the wages of

the more stubborn men who refused to make any




improvement, and such as lowering the piece-work

price, hiring green men, and personally teaching them

how to do the work, with the promise from them that

when they had learned how, they would then do a

fair day's work. While the men constantly brought

such pressure to bear (both inside and outside the

works) upon all those who started to increase their

output that they were finally compelled to do about

as the rest did, or else quit. No one who has not

had this experience can have an idea of the bitter-

ness which is gradually developed in such a struggle.

In a war of this kind the workmen have one expe-

dient which is usually effective. They use their

ingenuity

to contrive various

waysin which the

machines which they are running are broken or

damaged apparently by accident, or in the regular

course of work and this they always lay at the

door of the foreman, who has forced them to drive

the machine so hard that it is overstrained and is

beingruined. And there are few foremen indeed

who are able to stand up against the combined pres-

sure of all of the men in the shop. In this case the

problem was complicated by the fact that the shop

ran both day and night.

The writer had two advantages, however, which

are not possessed by the ordinary foreman, and thesecame, curiously enough, from the fact that he was

not the son of a working man.

First, owing to the fact that he happened not to

be of working parents, the owners of the company

believed that he had the interest of the works more




at heart than the other workmen, and they therefore

had more confidence in his word than they did inthat of the machinists who were under him. So

that, when the machinists reported to the Superin-

tendent that the machines were being smashed upbecause an incompetent foreman was overstraining

them, the Superintendent accepted the word of the

writer when he said that these men were deliberately

breaking their machines as a part of the piece-work

war which was going on, and he also allowed the

writer to make the only effective answer to this

Vandalism on the part of the men, namely: "There

will be no more accidents to the machines in this

shop. If any part of a machine is broken the man in

charge of it must pay at least a part of the cost of

its repair, and the fines collected in this way will all

be handed over to the mutual beneficial association

to help care for sick workmen." This soon stopped

the wilful breaking of machines.

Second. If the writer had been one of the work-

men, and had lived where they lived, they would

have brought such social pressure to bear upon him

that it would have been impossible to have stood out

against them. He would have been called "scab"

and other foul names every time he appeared on

the street, his wife would have been abused, and his

children would have been stoned. Once or twice

he was begged by some of his friends among the

workmen not to walk home, about two and a half

miles along the lonely path by the side of the rail-

way. He was told that if he continued to do this




it would be at the risk of his life. In all such

cases, however,adisplay

oftimidity

is

aptto increase

rather than diminish the risk, so the writer told

these men to say to the other men in the shop that

he proposed to walk home every night right up that

railway track; that he never had carried and never

would carry any weapon of any kind, and that they

could shoot and be d.

After about three years of this kind of struggling,

the output of the machines had been materially

increased, in many cases doubled, and as a result

the writer had been promoted from one gang-boss-

ship to another until he became foreman of the

shop. For any right-minded man, however, this

success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter

relations which he is forced to maintain with all of

those around him. Life which is one continuous

struggle with other men is hardly worth living.

His workman friends came to him continually and

asked him, in a personal, friendly way, whether hewould advise them, for their own best interest, to

turn out more work. And, as a truthful man, he

had to tell them that if he were in their place he

would fight against turning out any more work,

just as they were doing, because under the piece-

work system they would be allowed to earn no more

wages than they had been earning, and yet they

would be made to work harder.

Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he

decided to make a determined effort to in some way

change the system of management, so that the inter-




ests of the workmen and the management should

become the same, instead of antagonistic. This

resulted, some three years later, in the starting of

the type of management which is described in papers

presented to the American Society of Mechanical

Engineers entitled "A Piece-Rate System" and

"Shop Management."

In preparation for this system the writer realized

that the greatest obstacle to harmonious cooperation

between the workmen and the management lay in

the ignorance of the management as to what really

constitutes a proper day's work for a workman. He

fully realized that, although he was foreman of the

shop, the combined knowledge and skill of the work-

men who were under him was certainly ten times as

great as his own. He therefore obtained the per-

mission of Mr. William Sellers, who was at that time

the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to

spend some money in a careful, scientific study of

the timerequired

to do various kinds of work.

Mr. Sellers allowed this more as a reward for

having, to a certain extent, "made good" as foreman

of the shop in getting more work out of the men,

than for any other reason. He stated, however,

that he did not believe that any scientific study of

this sort wouldgive

results of

muchvalue.

Among several investigations which were under-

taken at this time, one was an attempt to find some

rule, or law, which would enable a foreman to know

in advance how much of any kind of heavy laboring

work a man who was well suited to his job ought




to do in a day; that is, to study the tiring effect

of heavy labor upon a first-class man. Our first

step was to employ a young college graduate to

look up all that had been written on the subject

in English, German, and French. Two classes of

experiments had been made: one by physiologists

who were studying the endurance of the human

animal, and the other by engineers who wished to

determine what fraction of a horse-power a man-

power was. These experiments had been made

largely upon men who were lifting loads by means of

turning the crank of a winch from which weights

were suspended, and others who were engaged in

walking, running, and lifting weights in various

ways. However, the records of these investigations

were so meager that no law of any value could be

deduced from them. We therefore started a series

of experiments of our own.

Two first-class laborers were selected, men who

had proved themselves to be physically powerful

and who were also good steady workers. These men

were paid double wages during the experiments, and

were told that they must work to the best of their

ability at all times, and that we should make certain

tests with them from time to time to find whether

theywere

"soldiering"or not, and that the moment

either one of them started to try to deceive us

he would be discharged. They worked to the best

of their ability throughout the time that they were

being observed.

Now it must be clearly understood that in these




experiments we were not trying to find the maxi-

mum work that a man could do on a short spurt or

for a few days, but that our endeavor was to learn

what really constituted a full day's work for a first-

class man; the best day's work that a man could

properly do, year in and year out, and still thrive

under. These men were given all kinds of tasks,

which were carried out each day under the close

observation of the young college man who was con-

ducting the experiments, and who at the same time

noted with a stop-watch the proper time for all of

the motions that were made by the men. Every

element in any way connected with the work which

we believed could have a bearing on the result was

carefully studied and recorded. What we hoped

ultimately to determine was what fraction of a

horse-power a man was able to exert, that is, how

many foot-pounds of work a man could do in a day.

After completing this series of experiments, there-

fore, each man's work for each

daywas translated

into foot-pounds of energy, and to our surprise we

found that there was no constant or uniform relation

between the foot-pounds of energy which the man

exerted during a day and the tiring effect of his work.

On some kinds of work the man would be tired out

whendoing perhaps

not more thanone-eighth

of a

horse-power, while in others he would be tired to no

greater extent by doing half a horse-power of work.

We failed, therefore, to find any law which was an

accurate guide to the maximum day's work for a

first-class workman.




A large amount of very valuable data had been

obtained, which enabled us to know, for many

kinds of labor, what was a proper day's work. It

did not seem wise, however, at this time to spend

any more money in trying to find the exact law

which we were after. Some years later, when more

money was available for this purpose, a second series

of experiments was made, similar to the first, but

somewhat more thorough. This, however, resulted

as the first experiments, in obtaining valuable infor-

mation but not in the development of a law. Again,

some years later, a third series of experiments was

made, and this time no trouble was spared in our

endeavor to make the work thorough. Every minute

element which could in any way affect the problem

was carefully noted and studied, and two college men

devoted about three months to the experiments.

After this data was again translated into foot-pounds

of energy exerted for each man each day, it became

perfectly clear that there is no direct relation between

the horse-power which a man exerts (that is, his

foot-pounds of energy per day) and the tiring effect

of the work on the man. The writer, however, was

quite as firmly convinced as ever that some definite,

clear-cut law existed as to what constitutes a full

day's work for a first-class laborer, and our data

had been so carefully collected and recorded that

he felt sure that the necessary information was

included somewhere in the records. The problem

of developing this law from the accumulated facts

was therefore handed over to Mr. Carl G. Earth,




who is a better mathematician than any of the rest

of us, and we decided to investigate the problem

in a new way, by graphically representing each

element of the work through plotting curves, which

should give us, as it were, a bird's-eye view of every

element. In a comparatively short time Mr. Barth

had discovered the law governing the tiring effect of

heavy labor on a first-class man. And it is so simple

in its nature that it is truly remarkable that it

should not have been discovered and clearly under-

stood years before. The law which was developed

is as follows:

The law is confined to that class of work in which

the limit of a man'scapacity

is reached because he

is tired out. It is the law of heavy laboring, cor-

responding to the work of the cart horse, rather than

that of the trotter. Practically all such work con-

sists of a heavy pull or a push on the man's arms,

that is, the man's strength is exerted by either lift-

ingor

pushing somethingwhich he

graspsin his

hands. And the law is that for each given pull

or push on the man's arms it is possible for the work-

man to be under load for only a definite percentage

of the day. For example, when pig iron is being

handled (each pig weighing 92 pounds), a first-

class workman can only be under load 43 per cent,of the day. He must be entirely free from load

during 57 per cent, of the day. And as the load

becomes lighter, the percentage of the day under

which the man can remain under load increases.

So that, if the workman is handling a half-pig,




weighing 46 pounds, he can then be under load

58 per cent, of the day, and only has to rest during

42 per cent. As the weight grows lighter the man can

remain under load during a larger and larger per-

centage of the day, until finally a load is reached

which he can carry in his hands all day long without

being tired out. When that point has been arrived

at this law ceases to be useful as a guide to a

laborer's endurance, and some other law must be

found which indicates the man's capacity for work.

When a laborer is carrying a piece of pig iron

weighing 92 pounds in his hands, it tires him about

as much to stand still under the load as it does to

walk with it, since his arm muscles are under the

same severe tension whether he is moving or not.

A man, however, who stands still under a load is

exerting no horse-power whatever, and this accounts

for the fact that no constant relation could be traced

in various kinds of heavy laboring work between

the foot-pounds of energy exerted and the tiring

effect of the work on the man. It will also be clear

that in all work of this kind it is necessary for the

arms of the workman to be completely free from

load (that is, for the workman to rest) at frequent

intervals. Throughout the time that the man is

under a

heavyload the tissues of his arm muscles

are in process of degeneration, and frequent periods

of rest are required in order that the blood mayhave a chance to restore these tissues to their normal

condition.

To return now to our pig-iron handlers at the




Bethlehem Steel Company. If Schmidt had been

allowed to attack the pile of 47 tons of pig iron

without the guidance or direction of a man who

understood the art, or science, of handling pig iron,

in his desire to earn his high wages he would probably

have tired himself out by 11 or 12 o'clock in the day.

He would have kept so steadily at work that his

muscles would not have had the proper periods of

rest absolutely needed for recuperation, and he

would have been completely exhausted early in

the day. By having a man, however, who under-

stood this law, stand over him and direct his work,

day after day, until he acquired the habit of resting

at proper intervals, he was able to work at an even

gait all day long without unduly tiring himself.

Now one of the very first requirements for a man

who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation

is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that

he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up

the ox than any other type. The man who is

mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason

entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the

grinding monotony of work of this character. There-

fore the workman who is best suited to handling

pig iron is unable to understand the real science

of

doingthis class of work. He is so

stupidthat the

word"percentage" has no meaning to him, and he

must consequently be trained by a man more intel-

ligent than himself into the habit of working in

accordance with the laws of this science before he

can be successful.




The writer trusts that it is now clear that even

in the case of the most elementary form of labor

that is known, there is a science, and that when the

man best suited to this class of work has been care-

fully selected, when the science of doing the work

has been developed, and when the carefully selected

man has been trained to work in accordance with

this science, the results obtained must of necessity

be overwhelmingly greater than those which are

possible under the plan of"initiative and incentive."

Let us, however, again turn to the case of these

pig-iron handlers, and see whether, under the ordinary

type of management, it would not have been possible

to obtain practically the same results.

The writer has put the problem before many

good managers, and asked them whether, under

premium work, piece work, or any of the ordinary

plans of management, they would be likely even to

approximate 47 tons l

per man per day, and not a

1

Many people have questioned the accuracy of the statement thatfirst-class workmen can load 47i tons of pig iron from the ground on to a

car in a day. For those who are skeptical, therefore, the following data

relating to this work are given:

First. That our experiments indicated the existence of the following

law: that a first-class laborer, suited to such work as handling pig iron,

could be under load only 42 per cent, of the day and must be free from

load 58 per cent, of the day.

Second. That a man in

loading pigiron from piles placed on the ground

in an open field on to a car which stood on a track adjoining these piles,

ought to handle (and that they did handle regularly) 47J long tons

(2240 pounds per ton) per day.

That the price paid for loading this pig iron was 3& cents per ton, and

that the men working at it averaged $1.85 per day, whereas, in the past,

they had been paid only $1.15 per day.

In addition to these facts, the following are given:




man has suggested that an output of over 18 to

25 tons could be attained

by anyof the

ordinaryexpedients. It will be remembered that the Bethle-

hem men were loading only 12i tons per man.

To go into the matter in more detail, however:

As to the scientific selection of the men, it is a fact

that in this gang of 75 pig-iron handlers only about

one manin

eight was physically capable of handling47| tons per day. With the very best of intentions,

the other seven out of eight men were physically

unable to work at this pace. Now the one man in

eight who was able to do this work was in no sense

superior to the other men who were working on the

47 long tons equal 106,400 pounds of pig iron per day.At 92 pounds per pig, equals 1156 pigs per day.

42 per cent, of a day under load equals 600 minutes; multiplied by0.42 equals 252 minutes under load.

252 minutes divided by 1156 pigs equals 0.22 minutes per pig under

load.

A pig-iron handler walks on the level at the rate of one foot in 0.006

minutes. The average distance of the piles of pig iron from the car was

36 feet. It is a fact, however, that many of the pig-iron handlers ran

with their pig as soon as they reached the inclined plank. Many of them

also would run down the plank after loading the car. So that when the

actual loading went on, many of them moved at a faster rate than is indi-

cated by the above figures. Practically the men were made to take a rest,

generally by sitting down, after loading ten to twenty pigs. This rest was

in addition to the time which it took them to walk back from the car

to the pile. It is likely that many of those who are skeptical about the

possibility of loading this amount of pig iron do not realize that while

these men were walking back they were entirely free from load, and that

therefore their muscles had, during that time, the opportunity for recupera-

tion. It will be noted that with an average distance of 36 feet of the pig

iron from the car, these men walked about eight miles under load each

day and eight miles free from load.

If any one who is interested in these figures will multiply them and

divide them, one into the other, in various ways, he will find that all of

the facts stated check up exactly.




gang. He merely happened to be a man of the type

of the ox, no rare specimen of humanity, difficult

to find and therefore very highly prized. On the con-

trary, he was a man so stupid that he was unfitted

to do most kinds of laboring work, even. The

selection of the man, then, does not involve finding

some extraordinary individual, but merely picking

out from among very ordinary men the few who are

especially suited to this type of work. Although

in this particular gang only one man in eight was

suited to doing the work, we had not the slightest

difficulty in getting all the men who were needed

some of them from inside of the works and others

from theneighboring country

who wereexactly

suited to the job.

Under the management of"initiative and incen-

tive" the attitude of the management is that of"putting the work up to the workmen." What

likelihood would there be, then, under the old type

of management, of these men properly selectingthemselves for pig-iron handling? Would they be

likely to get rid of seven men out of eight from their

own gang and retain only the eighth man? No!

And no expedient could be devised which would

make these men properly select themselves. Even

if they fully realized the necessity of doing so in orderto obtain high wages (and they are not sufficiently

intelligent properly to grasp this necessity), the fact

that their friends or their brothers who were working

right alongside of them would temporarily be thrown

out of a job because they were not suited to this




kind of work would entirely prevent them from

properly selecting themselves, that is, from removing

the seven out of eight men on the gang who were

unsuited to pig-iron handling.

As to the possibility, under the old type of manage-

ment, of inducing these pig-iron handlers (after

they had been properly selected) to work in accord-

ance with the science of

doing heavy laboring, namely,having proper scientifically determined periods of

rest in close sequence to periods of work. As has

been indicated before, the essential idea of the

ordinary types of management is that each workman

has become more skilled in his own trade than it

is

possiblefor

anyone in the

managementto

be,and

that, therefore, the details of how the work shall

best be done must be left to him. The idea, then,

of taking one man after another and training him

under a competent teacher into new working habits

until he continually and habitually works in accord-

ance withscientific

laws, which have been developedby some one else, is directly antagonistic to the old

idea that each workman can best regulate his own

way of doing the work. And besides this, the man

suited to handling pig iron is too stupid properly to

train himself. Thus it will be seen that with the

ordinary types of management the development ofscientific knowledge to replace rule of thumb, the

scientific selection of the men, and inducing the men

to work in accordance with these scientific principles

are entirely out of the question. And this because

the philosophy of the old management puts the entire




responsibility upon the workmen, while the philoso-

phy of the new places a great part of it upon the

management.

With most readers great sympathy will be aroused

because seven out of eight of these pig-iron handlers

were thrown out of a job. This sympathy is entirely

wasted, because almost all of them were immedi-

ately given other jobs with the Bethlehem Steel

Company. And indeed it should be understood

that the removal of these men from pig-iron handling,

for which they were unfit, was really a kindness to

themselves, because it was the first step toward

finding them work for which they were peculiarly

fitted,

and at

which,after

receiving proper training,they could permanently and legitimately earn higher

wages.

Although the reader may be convinced that there

is a certain science back of the handling of pig iron,

still it is more than likely that he is still skeptical

as to the existenceof

ascience for

doingother

kinds of laboring. One of the important objects of

this paper is to convince its readers that every single

act of every workman can be reduced to a science.

With the hope of fully convincing the reader of this

fact, therefore, the writer proposes to give several

more simple illustrations from among the thousandswhich are at hand.

For example, the average man would question

whether there is much of any science in the work

of shoveling. Yet there is but little doubt, if any

intelligent reader of this paper were deliberately to




set out to find what may be called the foundation

of the science of shoveling, that with perhaps 15

to 20 hours of thought and analysis he would be

almost sure to have arrived at the essence of this

science. On the other hand, so completely are the

rule-of-thumb ideas still dominant that the writer

has never -met a single shovel contractor to whomit had ever even occurred that there was such a

thingas the science of shoveling. This science is so

elementary as to be almost self-evident.

For a first-class shoveler there is a given shovel

load at which he will do his biggest day's work.

What is this shovel load? Will a first-class man do

more workper day

with a shovel load of 5pounds,

10 pounds, 15 pounds, 20, 25, 30, or 40 pounds?

Now this is a question which can be answered only

through carefully made experiments. By first select-

ing two or three first-class shovelers, and paying

them extra wages for doing trustworthy work, and

thengradually varying the shovel load and having

all the conditions accompanying the work carefully

observed for several weeks by men who were used

to experimenting, it was found that a first-class manwould do his biggest day's work with a shovel load

of about 21 pounds. For instance, that this man

would shovel a larger tonnage per day with a 21-pound load than with a 24-pound load or than with

an 18-pound load on his shovel. It is, of course,

evident that no shoveler can always take a load of

exactly 21 pounds on his shovel, but nevertheless,

although his load may vary 3 or 4 pounds one way




or the other, either below or above the 21 pounds,

he will do his biggest day's work when his average

for the day is about 21 pounds.

The writer does not wish it to be understood that

this is the whole of the art or science of shoveling.

There are many other elements, which together

go to make up this science. But he wishes to

indicate the important effect which this one piece

of scientific knowledge has upon the work of

shoveling.

At the works of the Bethlehem Steel Company,

for example, as a result of this law, instead of allow-

ing each shoveler to select and own his own shovel,

it became necessary to provide some 8 to 10 different

kinds of shovels, etc., each one appropriate to

handling a given type of material; not only so as to

enable the men to handle an average load of 21

pounds, but also to adapt the shovel to several

other requirements which become perfectly evident

when this work is studied as a science. Alarge

shovel tool room was built, in which were stored

not only shovels but carefully designed and standard-

ized labor implements of all kinds, such as picks,

crowbars, etc. This made it possible to issue to

each workman a shovel which would hold a load

of 21 pounds of whatever class of material they wereto handle: a small shovel for ore, say, or a large one

for ashes. Iron ore is one of the heavy materials

which are handled in a works of this kind, and rice

coal, owing to the fact that it is so slippery on the

shovel, is one of the lightest materials. And it was




found on studying the rule-of-thumb plan at the

Bethlehem Steel

Company,where each shoveler

owned his own shovel, that he would frequently

go from shoveling ore, with a load of about 30 pounds

per shovel, to handling rice coal, with a load on

the same shovel of less than 4 pounds. In the one

case, he was so overloaded that it was impossible for

him to do a full day's work, andin the other case

hewas so ridiculously underloaded that it was manifestly

impossible to even approximate a day's work.

Briefly to illustrate some of the other elements

which go to make up the science of shoveling,

thousands of stop-watch observations were made to

study just how quickly a laborer, provided in eachcase with the proper type of shovel, can push his

shovel into the pile of materials and then draw it

out properly loaded. These observations were made

first when pushing the shovel into the body of the

pile. Next when shoveling on a dirt bottom, that

is, at the outside edge of the pile, and next with awooden bottom, and finally with an iron bottom.

Again a similar accurate time study was made of

the time required to swing the shovel backward and

then throw the load for a given horizontal distance,

accompanied by a given height. This time study

was made for various combinations of distance and

height. With data of this sort before him, coupled

with the law of endurance described in the case of

the pig-iron handlers, it is evident that the man who

is directing shovelers can first teach them the exact

methods which should be employed to use their




strength to the very best advantage, and can then

assign them daily tasks which are so just that

the workman can each day be sure of earning the

large bonus which is paid whenever he successfully

performs this task.

There were about 600 shovelers and laborers of

this general class in the yard of the Bethlehem Steel

Companyat this time. These men were scattered

in their work over a yard which was, roughly, about

two miles long and half a mile wide. In order that

each workman should be given his proper implement

and his proper instructions for doing each new job,

it was necessary to establish a detailed system for

directing menin their

work,in

placeof

the old planof handling them in large groups, or gangs, under a

few yard foremen. As each workman came into

the works in the morning, he took out of his own

special pigeonhole, with his number on the outside,

two pieces of paper, one of which stated just what

intplements he was to get from the tool room andwhere he was to start to work, and the second of

which gave the history of his previous day's work;

that is, a statement of the work which he had done,

how much he had earned the day before, etc. Manyof these men were foreigners and unable to read and

write, but they all knew at a glance the essence of

this report, because yellow paper showed the man

that he had failed to do his full task the day before,

and informed him that he had not earned as much

as $1.85 a day, and that none but high-priced men

would be allowed to stay permanently with this




gang. The hope was further expressed that he would

earn his full

wageson the

following day.So that

whenever the men received white slips they knew

that everything was all right, and whenever they

received yellow slips they realized that they must do

better or they would be shifted to some other class

of work.

Dealing with every workmanas

a separateindi-

vidual in this way involved the building of a labor

office for the superintendent and clerks who were

in charge of this section of the work. In this office

every laborer's work was planned out well in advance,

and the workmen were all moved from place to

place by the clerks with elaborate diagrams or mapsof the yard before them, very much as chessmen are

moved on a chess-board, a telephone and messenger

system having been installed for this purpose. In

this way a large amount of the time lost through hav-

ing too many men in one place and too few in an-

other, and through waiting between jobs, was entirely

eliminated. Under the old system the workmen were

kept day after day in comparatively large gangs,

each under a single foreman, and the gang was apt

to remain of pretty nearly the same size whether

there was much or little of the particular kind of

work on hand which this foreman had under his

charge, since each gang had to be kept large enough

to handle whatever work in its special line was likely

to come along.

When one ceases to deal with men in large gangs

or groups, and proceeds to study each workman as




an individual, if the workman fails to do his task,

some competent teacher should be sent to show him

exactly how his work can best be done, to guide,

help, and encourage him, and, at the same time, to

study his possibilities as a workman. So that, under

the plan which individualizes each workman, instead

of brutally discharging the man or lowering his

wagesfor failing to make

goodat once, he is

giventhe time and the help required to make him pro-

ficient at his present job, or he is shifted to another

class of work for which he is either mentally or

physically better suited.

All of this requires the kindly cooperation of the

management,and involves a

muchmore elaborate

organization and system than the old-fashioned

herding of men in large gangs. This organization

consisted, in this case, of one set of men, who were

engaged in the development of the science of laboring

through time study, such as has been described

above; another set of men, mostly skilled laborers

themselves, who were teachers, and who helped and

guided the men in their work; another set of tool-

room men who provided them with the proper

implements and kept them in perfect order, and

another set of clerks who planned the work well in

advance, moved the men with the least loss of timefrom one place to another, and properly recorded

each man's earnings, etc. And this furnishes an

elementary illustration of what has been referred

to as cooperation between the management and the

workmen.




The question which naturally presents itself is

whether an elaborate

organization

of this sort can

be made to pay for itself; whether such an organiza-

tion is not top-heavy. This question will best be

answered by a statement of the results of the third

year of working under this plan.

Old Plan New Plan

Task Work

The number of yard laborers

was reduced from between 400 & 600 down to about 140

Average number of tons per

man per day 16 59

Average earnings per man

per day $1.15 $1.88

Average cost of handling a

ton of 2240 Ibs $0.072 $0.033

And in computing the low cost of $0.033 per ton, the

office and tool-room expenses, and the wages of all

labor superintendents, foremen, clerks, time-study

men, etc., are included.

During this year the total saving of the new planover the old amounted to $36,417.69, and during

the six months following, when all of the work of

the yard was on task work, the saving was at the

rate of between $75,000 and $80,000 per year.

Perhaps the most important of all the results

attained was the effect on the workmen themselves.A careful inquiry into the condition of these men

developed the fact that out of the 140 workmen only

two were said to be drinking men. This does not,

of course, imply that many of them did not take an

occasional drink. The fact is that a steady drinker




would find it almost impossible to keep up with the

pace which was set, so that they were practically

all sober. Many, if not most of them, were saving

money, and they all lived better than they had

before. These men constituted the finest body of

picked laborers that the writer has ever seen together,

and they looked upon the men who were over them,

their bosses and their teachers, as their very best

friends; not as nigger drivers, forcing them to work

extra hard for ordinary wages, but as friends who

were teaching them and helping them to earn much

higher wages than they had ever earned before.

It would have been absolutely impossible for any one

to have stirred

upstrife between these men and their

employers. And this presents a very simple though

effective illustration of what is meant by the words

"prosperity for the employ^, coupled with prosperity

for the employer," the two principal objects of man-

agement. It is evident also that this result has

been broughtabout

bythe

applicationof the four

fundamental principles of scientific management.

As another illustration of the value of a scientific

study of the motiveswhich influence workmen in their

daily work, the loss of ambition and initiative will

be cited, which takes place in workmen when they

are herded into gangs instead of being treated as

separate individuals. A careful analysis had dem-

onstrated the fact that when workmen are herded

together in gangs, each man in the gang becomes

far less efficient than when his personal ambition

is stimulated; that when men work in gangs, their




Bethlehem men. The Pittsburg men offered 4TVcents a ton for unloading exactly the same ore, with

the same shovels, from the same cars, that were

unloaded in Bethlehem for 3A cents a ton. After

carefully considering this situation, it was decided

that it would be unwise to pay more than SA cents

per ton for unloading the Bethlehem cars, because,

at this rate, the Bethlehem laborers were earning a

little over $1.85 per man per day, and this price

was 60 per cent, more than the ruling rate of wages

around Bethlehem.

A long series of experiments, coupled with close

observation, had demonstrated the fact that when

workmen of this caliber are given a carefully measured

task, which calls for a big day's work on their part,

and that when in return for this extra effort they are

paid wages up to 60 per cent, beyond the wages

usually paid, that this increase in wages tends to

make them not only more thrifty but better men in

every way;that

theylive rather

better, beginto

save money, become more sober, and work more

steadily. When, on the ether hand, they receive

much more than a 60 per cent, increase in wages,

many of them will work irregularly and tend to

become more or less shiftless, extravagant, and dissi-

pated. Our experiments showed,in

other words,that it does not do for most men to get rich too fast.

After deciding, for this reason, not to raise the

wages of our ore handlers, these men were brought

into the office one at a time, and talked to somewhat

as follows:




"Now, Patrick, you have proved to us that you

are a high-priced man. You have been earning every

day a little more than $1.85, and you are just the

sort of man that we want to have in our ore-shovel-

ing gang. A man has come here from Pittsburg,

who is offering 4TV cents per ton for handling ore

while we can pay only 3A cents per ton. I think,

therefore, that you had better apply to this man for

a job. Of course, you know we are very sorry to

have you leave us, but you have proved yourself

a high-priced man, and we are very glad to see

you get this chance of earning more money. Just

remember, however, that at any time in the future,

when you get out of a job, you can always come right

back to us. There will always be a job for a high-

priced man like you in our gang here."

Almost all of the ore handlers took this advice,

and went to Pittsburg, but in about six weeks most

of them were again back in Bethlehem unloading

ore at the old rate of 3T27r cents a ton. The writer

had the following talk with one of these men after

he had returned:

"Patrick, what are you doing back here? I

thought we had gotten rid of you."

"Well, sir, I'll tell you how it was. When we

got out there Jimmy and I were put on to a car

with eight other men. We started to shovel the

ore out just the same as we do here. After about

half an hour I saw a little devil alongside of me

doing pretty near nothing, so I said to him, 'Whydon't you go to work? Unless we get the ore out




of this car we won't get any money on pay-day.'

He turned to me and said, 'Who in are you?'

'Well/ I said, 'that's none of your business'; and

the little devil stood up to me and said, 'You'll

be minding your own business, or I'll throw you off

this car!' 'Well, I could have spit on him and

drowned him, but the rest of the men put down their

shovels and looked as if they were going to back

him up; so I went round to Jimmy and said (so

that the whole gang could hear it), 'Now, Jimmy,

you and I will throw a shovelful whenever this little

devil throws one, and not another shovelful.' So

we watched him, and only shoveled when he shoveled

When pay-day came around, though, we had less

money than we got here at Bethlehem. After that

Jimmy and I went in to the boss, and asked him

for a car to ourselves, the same as we got at Bethle-

hem, but he told us to mind our own business. And

when another pay-day came around we had less

money than we got here at Bethlehem, so Jimmyand I got the gang together and brought them all

back here to work again."

When working each man for himself, these men

were able to earn higher wages at 3T2ir cents a ton

than they could earn when they were paid 4A cents

a ton on

gangwork; and this again shows the great

gain which results from working according to even

the most elementary of scientific principles. But

it also shows that in the application of the most

elementary principles it is necessary for the manage-

ment to do their share of the work in cooperating




with the workmen. The Pittsburg managers knew

just how the results had been attained at Bethlehem,but they were unwilling to go to the small trouble

and expense required to plan ahead and assign a

separate car to each shoveler, and then keep an

individual record of each man's work, and pay him

just what he had earned.

Bricklaying is one of the oldest of our trades.

For hundreds of years there has been little or no

improvement made in the implements and materials

used in this trade, nor in fact in the method of

laying bricks. In spite of the millions of men who

have practised this trade, no great improvement has

been evolved for many generations. Here, then,

at least, one would expect to find but little gain

possible through scientific analysis and study. Mr.

Frank B, Gilbreth, a member of our Society, who had

himself studied bricklaying in his youth, became

interested in the principles of scientific management,

and decided to apply them to the art of bricklay-

ing. He made an intensely interesting analysis and

study of each movement of the bricklayer, and one

after another eliminated all unnecessary movements

and substituted fast for slow motions. He experi-

mented with every minute element which in any

way affects the speed and the tiring of the brick-

layer.

He developed the exact position which each of

the feet of the bricklayer should occupy with rela-

tion to the wall, the mortar box, and the pile of

bricks, and so made it unnecessary for him to take




a step or two toward the pile of bricks and back

again each time a brick is laid.

He studied the best height for the mortar box

and brick pile, and then designed a scaffold, with a

table on it, upon which all of the materials are placed,

so as to keep the bricks, the mortar, the man, and

the wall in their proper relative positions. These

scaffolds are adjusted, as the wall grows in height,

for all of the bricklayers by a laborer especially

detailed for this purpose, and by this means the

bricklayer is saved the exertion of stooping down to

the level of his feet for each brick and each trowel-

ful of mortar and then straightening up again.

Think of the waste of effort that has gone on through

all these years, with each bricklayer lowering his

body, weighing, say, 150 pounds, down two feet

and raising it up again every time a brick (weigh-

ing about 5 pounds) is laid in the wall! And this

each bricklayer did about one thousand times a day.

As a result of further

study,after the bricks are

unloaded from the cars, and before bringing them to

the bricklayer, they are carefully sorted by a laborer,

and placed with their best edge up on a simple

wooden frame, constructed so as to enable him

to take hold of each brick in the quickest time

and in the mostadvantageous position.

In this

way the bricklayer avoids either having to turn

the brick over or end for end to examine it before

laying it, and he saves, also, the time taken in decid-

ing which is the best edge and end to place on the

outside of the wall. In most cases, also, he saves




the time taken in disentangling the brick from a

disorderly pile on thescaffold. This

"pack"of

bricks (as Mr. Gilbreth calls his loaded wooden

frames) is placed by the helper in its proper position

on the adjustable scaffold close to the mortar box.

We have all been used to seeing bricklayers tap

each brick after it is placed on its bed of mortar sev-

eral times with the end of the handle of the trowelso as to secure the right thickness for the joint.

Mr. Gilbreth found that by tempering the mor-

tar just right, the bricks could be readily bedded

to the proper depth by a downward pressure of the

hand with which they are laid. He insisted that

his mortar mixers should give special attention to

tempering the mortar, and so save the time con-

sumed in tapping the brick.

Through all of this minute study of the motions

to be made by the bricklayer in laying bricks under

standard conditions, Mr. Gilbreth has reduced his

movements from eighteen motions per brick to five,

and even in one case to as low as two motions

per brick. He has given all of the details of this

analysis to the profession in the chapter headed

"Motion Study," of his book entitled "Bricklaying

System," published by Myron C. Clerk Publishing

Company, New York and Chicago; E. F. N. Spon,

of London.

An analysis of the expedients used by Mr. Gilbreth

in reducing the motions of his bricklayers from

eighteen to five shows that this improvement has been

made in three different ways:




First. He has entirely dispensed with certain move-

ments which the bricklayers in the past believed were

necessary; but which a careful study and trial on

his part have shown to be useless.

Second. He has introduced simple apparatus, such

as his adjustable scaffold and his packets for hold-

ing the bricks, by means of which, with a very

small amount of cooperation from a cheap laborer,

he entirely eliminates a lot of tiresome and time-

consuming motions which are necessary for the brick-

layer who lacks the scaffold and the packet.

Third. He teaches his bricklayers to make simple

motions with both hands at the same time, where

before they completed a motion with the right hand

and followed it later with one from the left hand.

For example, Mr. Gilbreth teaches his brick-

layer to pick up a brick in the left hand at the same

instant that he takes a trowelful of mortar with

the right hand. This work with two hands at the

same time is, of course, made possible by substitut-

ing a deep mortar box for the old mortar board

(on which the mortar spread out so thin that a

step or two had to be taken to reach it) and then

placing the mortar box and the brick pile close

together, and at the proper height on his new

scaffold.

These three kinds of improvements are typical

of the ways in which needless motions can be entirely

eliminated and quicker types of movements substi-

tuted for slow movements when scientific motion

study, as Mr. Gilbreth calls his analysis, time study,



THE PRINCIPLES OP SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 81

as the writer has called similar work, are applied in

any trade.Most practical men would (knowing the opposi-

tion of almost all tradesmen to making any change in

their methods and habits), however, be skeptical as

to the possibility of actually achieving any large

results from a study of this sort. Mr. Gilbreth

reports that a few months ago, in a large brick build-

ing which he erected, he demonstrated on a com-

mercial scale the great gain which is possible from

practically applying his scientific study. With union

bricklayers, in laying a factory wall, twelve inches

thick, with two kinds of brick, faced and ruled joints

on both sides of the wall, he averaged, after his

selected workmen had become skilful in his new

methods, 350 bricks per man per hour; whereas the

average speed of doing this work with the old

methods was, in that section of the country, 120

bricks per man per hour. His bricklayers were

taught his new method of bricklaying by their fore-

man. Those who failed to profit by their teaching

were dropped, and each man, as he became profi-

cient under the new method, received a substantial

(not a small) increase in his wages. With a view to

individualizing his workmen and stimulating each

man to do his best, Mr. Gilbreth also developed an

ingenious method for measuring and recording the

number of bricks laid by each man, and for telling

each workman at frequent intervals how many bricks

he had succeeded in laying.

It is only when this work is compared with the




conditions which prevail under the tyranny of some

of our misguided bricklayers' unions that the great

waste of human effort which is going on will be

realized. In one foreign city the bricklayers' union

have restricted their men to 275 bricks per day

on work of this character when working for the

city, and 375 per day when working for private

owners. The members of this union are probably

sincere in their belief that this restriction of output

is a benefit to their trade. It should be plain to

all men, however, that this deliberate loafing is

almost criminal, in that it inevitably results in

making every workman's family pay higher rent

for their housing, and also in the end drives work

and trade away from their city, instead of bringing

it to it.

Why is it, in a trade which has been continually

practised since before the Christian era, and with

implements practically the same as they now are,

that this

simplification

of thebricklayer's

move-

ments, this great gain, has not been made before?

It is highly likely that many times during all of

these years individual bricklayers have recognized

the possibility of eliminating each of these unneces-

sary motions. But even if, in the past, he did invent

each one of Mr. Gilbreth'simprovements,

no brick-

layer could alone increase his speed through their

adoption because it will be remembered that in all

cases several bricklayers work together in a row and

that the walls all around a building must grow at the

same rate of speed. No one bricklayer, then, can




work much faster than the one next to him. Nor

has any one workman the authority to make other

men cooperate with him to do faster work. It is

only through enforced standardization of methods,

enforced adoption of the best implements and work-

ing conditions, and enforced cooperation that this

faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforc-

ing the adoption of standards and of enforcing this

cooperation rests with the management alone. The

management must supply continually one or more

teachers to show each new man the new and simpler

motions, and the slower men must be constantly

watched and helped until they have risen to their

proper speed. All of those who, after proper teach-

ing, either will not or cannot work in accordance

with the new methods and at the higher speed must

be discharged by the management. The management

must also recognize the broad fact that workmen

will not submit to this more rigid standardization

and will not work extra hard, unless they receive

extra pay for doing it.

All of this involves an individual study of and

treatment for each man, while in the past they have

been handled in large groups.

The management must also see that those who

prepare the bricks and the mortar and adjust the

scaffold, etc., for the bricklayers, cooperate with

them by doing their work just right and always on

time; and they must also inform each bricklayer at

frequent intervals as to the progress he is making,

so that he may not unintentionally fall off in his




pace. Thus it will be seen that it is the assump-

tion by the management of new duties and new

kinds of work never done by employers in the past

that makes this great improvement possible, and

that, without this new help from the management,

the workman even with full knowledge of the new

methods and with the best of intentions could not

attain these startling results.

Mr. Gilbreth's method of bricklaying furnishes a

simple illustration of true and effective cooperation.

Not the type of cooperation in which a mass of

workmen on one side together cooperate with the

management; but that in which several men in the

management (eachone in his own

particular way)help each workman individually, on the one hand,

by studying his needs and his shortcomings and

teaching him better and quicker methods, and, on

the other hand, by seeing that all other workmen

with whom he comes in contact help and cooperate

with him by doing their part of the work right andfast.

The writer has gone thus fully into Mr. Gilbreth's

method in order that it may be perfectly clear that

this increase in output and that this harmony could

not have been attained under the management of

"initiative and incentive" (that is, by putting the

problem up to the workman and leaving him to

solve it alone) which has been the philosophy of the

past. And that his success has been due to the use

of the four elements which constitute the essence of

scientific management,




First. The development (by the management, not

the workman) of the science of bricklaying, withrigid rules for each motion of every man, and the

perfection and standardization of all implements and

working conditions.

Second. The careful selection and subsequent

training of the bricklayers into first-class men, and

the elimination of all men who refuse to or areunable to adopt the best methods.

Third. Bringing the first-class bricklayer and the

science of bricklaying together, through the con-

stant help and watchfulness of the management,

and through paying each man a large daily bonus

for working fast and doing what he is told to do.

Fourth. An almost equal division of the work and

responsibility between the workman and the manage-

ment. All day long the management work almost

side by side with the men, helping, encouraging,

and smoothing the way for them, while in the past

they stood one side, gave the men but little help,

and threw on to them almost the entire responsi-

bility as to methods, implements, speed, and har-

monious cooperation.

Of these four elements, the first (the development

of the science of bricklaying) is the most interesting

and spectacular. Each of the three others is, how-

ever, quite as necessary for success.

It must not be forgotten that back of all this,

and directing it, there must be the optimistic,

determined, and hard-working leader who can wait

patiently as well as work.




In most cases (particularly when the work to be

done is intricate in its nature) the"development

of the science"

is the most important of the four

great elements of the new management. There are

instances, however, in which the"scientific selection

of the workman" counts for more than anything else.

A case of this type is well illustrated in the very

simple thoughunusual work of inspecting bicycle

balls.

When the bicycle craze was at its height some

years ago several million small balls made of hardened

steel were used annually in bicycle bearings. And

among the twenty or more operations used in mak-

ingsteel

balls, perhapsthe most

importantwas that

of inspecting them after final polishing so as to

remove all fire-cracked or otherwise imperfect balls

before boxing.

The writer was given the task of systematizing

the largest bicycle ball factory in this country.

This company had been running for from eight toten years on ordinary day work before he undertook

its reorganization, so that the one hundred and

twenty or more girls who were inspecting the balls

were "old hands" and skilled at their jobs.

It is impossible even in the most elementary work

to change rapidly from the old independence of

individual day work to scientific cooperation.

In most cases, however, there exist certain imper-

fections in working conditions which can at once be

improved with benefit to all concerned.

In this instance it was found that the inspectors




(girls) were working ten and one-half hours per day

(with a Saturday half holiday.)

Their work consisted briefly in placing a row of

small polished steel balls on the back of the left

hand, in the crease between two of the fingers pressed

together, and while they were rolled over and over,

they were minutely examined in a strong light, and

with the aid of a magnet held in the right hand, the

defective balls were picked out and thrown into

especial boxes. Four kinds of defects were looked

for dented, soft, scratched, and fire-cracked

and they were mostly so minute as to be invisible to

an eye not especially trained to this work. It

required the closest attention and concentration,

so that the nervous tension of the inspectors was

considerable, in spite of the fact that they were

comfortably seated and were not physically tired.

A most casual study made it evident that a very

considerable part of the ten and one-half hours

during which the girls were supposed to work was

really spent in idleness because the working period

was too long.

It is a matter of ordinary common sense to plan

working hours so that the workers can really "work

while they work" and "play while they play," and

not mix the two.

Before the arrival of Mr. Sanford E. Thompson,

who undertook a scientific study of the whole pro-

cess, we decided, therefore, to shorten the working

hours.

The old foreman who had been over the inspecting




room for years was instructed to interview one after

another of the better inspectors and the more in-

fluential girls and persuade them that they could

do just as much work in ten hours each day as they

had been doing in ten and one-half hours. Each girl

was told that the proposition was to shorten the day's

work to ten hours and pay them the same day's pay

they

were receiving for the ten and one-half hours.

In about two weeks the foreman reported that all

of the girls he had talked to agreed that they could

do their present work just as well in ten hours as

in ten and one-half and that they approved of the

change.

The writer had not beenespecially

noted for his

tact so he decided that it would be wise for him to

display a little more of this quality by having the

girls vote on the new proposition. This decision

was hardly justified, however, for when the vote was

taken the girls were unanimous that 10i hours was

good enough for them and they wanted no innova-tion of any kind.

This settled the matter for the time being. Afew months later tact was thrown to the winds and

the working hours were arbitrarily shortened in suc-

cessive steps to 10 hours, 9i, 9, and 8i (the pay per

day remaining the same); and with each shorteningof the working day the output increased instead of

diminishing.

The change from the old to the scientific method

in this department was made under the direction

of Mr. Sanford E. Thompson, perhaps the most




experienced man in motion and time study in this

country,under the

general superintendenceof Mr.

H. L. Gautt.

In the Physiological departments of our univer-

sities experiments are regularly conducted to deter-

mine what is known as the"personal coefficient"

of the man tested. This is done by suddenly bring-

ing some object, the letter A or B for instance, withinthe range of vision of the subject, who, the instant

he recognizes the letter has to do some definite

thing, such as to press a particular electric button.

The time which elapses from the instant the letter

comes in view until the subject presses the button

is accurately recorded by a delicate scientific instru-

ment.

This test shows conclusively that there is a great

difference in the"personal coefficient" of different

men. Some individuals are born with unusually

quick powers of perception accompanied by quick

responsive action. With some the message is almost

instantly transmitted from the eye to the brain, and

the brain equally quickly responds by sending the

proper message to the hand.

Men of this type are said to have a low"personal

coefficient," while those of slow perception and slow

action have a high "personal coefficient."

Mr. Thompson soon recognized that the quality

most needed for bicycle ball inspectors was a low

"personal coefficient." Of course the ordinary quali-

ties of endurance and industry were also called for.

For the ultimate good of the girls as well as the




company, however, it became necessary to exclude

all girls who lacked a low"personal coefficient."

And unfortunately this involved laying off many of

the most intelligent, hardest working, and most

trustworthy girls merely because they did not

possess the quality of quick perception followed by

quick action.

While thegradual

selection ofgirls

wasgoing

on

other changes were also being made.

One of the dangers to be guarded against, when the

pay of the man or woman is made in any way to

depend on the quantity of the work done, is that in

the effort to increase the quantity the quality is apt

to deteriorate.It is necessary in almost all cases, therefore, to

take definite steps to insure against any falling off

in quality before moving in any way towards an

increase in quantity.

In the work of these particular girls quality was

the very essence. They were engaged in pickingout all defective balls.

The first step, therefore, was to make it impossible

for them to slight their work without being found out.

This was accomplished through what is known as

over-inspection. Each one of four of the most trust-

worthy girls was given each day a lot of balls to

inspect which had been examined the day before by

one of the regular inspectors; the number identify-

ing the lot to be over-inspected having been changed

by the foreman so that none of the over-inspectors

knew whose work they were examining. In addition




to this one of the lots inspected by the four over-

inspectors was examined on the following day bythe chief inspector, selected on account of her

especial accuracy and integrity.

An effective expedient was adopted for checking

the honesty and accuracy of the over-inspection.

Every two or three days a lot of balls was especially

prepared by the foreman, who counted out a definite

number of perfect balls, and added a recorded num-

ber of defective balls of each kind. Neither the

inspectors nor the over-inspectors had any means

of distinguishing this prepared lot from the regular

commercial lots. And in this way all temptation

to slight their work or make false returns was re-

moved.

After insuring in this way against deterioration

in quality, effective means were at once adopted to

increase the output. Improved day work was sub-

stituted for the old slipshod method. An accurate

daily record was kept both as to the quantity and

quality of the work done in order to guard against

any personal prejudice on the part of the foreman

and to insure absolute impartiality and justice for

each inspector. In a comparatively short time this

record enabled the foreman to stir the ambition of

all the inspectors by increasing the wages of those

who turned out a large quantity and good quality,

while at the same time lowering the pay of those

who did indifferent work and discharging others who

proved to be incorrigibly slow or careless. A careful

examination was then made of the way in which each




girl spent her time and an accurate time study was

undertaken, through the use of a

stop-watchand

record blanks, to determine how fast each kind of

inspection should be done, and to establish the

exact conditions under which each girl could do her

quickest and best work, while at the same time

guarding against giving her a task so severe that there

wasdanger

from overfatigue

or exhaustion. This

investigation showed that the girls spent a con-

siderable part of their time either in partial idle-

ness, talking and half working, or in actually doing

nothing.

Even when the hours of labor had been shortened

from 10^ to 8i hours, a close observation of the girls

showed that after about an hour and one-half of con-

secutive work they began to get nervous. They evi-

dently needed a rest. It is wise to stop short of the

point at which overstrain begins, so we arranged for

them to have a ten minutes period for recreation at

the end of each hour and one quarter. During theserecess periods (two of ten minutes each in the morning

and two in the afternoon) they were obliged to stop

work and were encouraged to leave their seats and

get a complete change of occupation by walking

around and talking, etc.

In one respect no doubt some people will say that

these girls were brutally treated. They were seated

so far apart that they could not conveniently talk

while at work.

Shortening their hours of labor, however, and

providing so far as we knew the most favorable




working conditions made it possible for them to

really work steadily instead of pretending to do so.

And it is only after this stage in the reorganization

is reached, when the girls have been properly selected

and on the one hand such precautions have been

taken as to guard against the possibility of over-

driving them, while, on the other hand, the tempta-

tion to slight their work has been removed and themost favorable working conditions have been estab-

lished, that the final step should be taken which

insures them what they most want, namely, high

wages, and the employers what they most want,

namely, the maximum output and best quality of

work, which means a low labor cost.

This step is to give each girl each day a carefully

measured task which demands a full day's work from

a competent operative, and also to give her a large pre-

mium or bonus whenever she accomplishes this task.

This was done in this case through establishing

what is known as differential rate piece work. 1

Under this system the pay of each girl was increased

in proportion to the quantity of her output and also

still more in proportion to the accuracy of her work.

As will be shown later, the differential rate (the

lots inspected by the over-inspectors forming the

basis for the differential) resulted in a large gain in

the quantity of work done and at the same time in

a marked improvement in the quality.

Before they finally worked to the best advantage

1 See paper read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,

by Fred. W. Taylor, Vol. XVI, p. 856, entitled"Piece Rate System."




it was found to be necessary to measure the output

of each girl as often as once every hour, and to send

a teacher to each individual who was found to be

falling behind to find what was wrong, to straighten

her out, and to encourage and help her to catch up.

There is a general principle back of this which

should be appreciated by all of those who are espe-

ciallyinterested in the

managementof men.

A reward, if it is to be effective in stimulating

men to do their best work, must come soon after

the work has been done. But few men are able to

look forward for more than a week or perhaps at

most a month, and work hard for a reward which

they a're to receiveat the

endof this time.

The average workman must be able to measure

what he has accomplished and clearly see his reward

at the end of each day if he is to do his best. And

more elementary characters, such as the young girls

inspecting bicycle balls, or childrerij for instance,

should have proper encouragement either in the

shape of personal attention from those over them

or an actual reward in sight as often as once an hour.

This is one of the principal reasons why coopera-

tion or"profit-sharing

"either through selling stock

to the employes or through dividends on wages

received at the end of the year, etc., have been at

the best only mildly effective in stimulating men to

work hard. The nice time which they are sure to

have to-day if they take things easily and go slowly

proves more attractive than steady hard work with

a possible reward to be shared with others six months




later. A second reason for the inefficiency of profit-

sharing schemes had been that no form of coopera-tion has yet been devised in which each individual

is allowed free scope for his personal ambition.

Personal ambition always has been and will remain

a more powerful incentive to exertion than a desire

for the general welfare. The few misplaced drones,

who do the loafing and share equally in the profits,

with the rest, under cooperation are sure to drag

the better men down toward their level.

Other and formidable difficulties in the path of

cooperative schemes are, the equitable division of

the profits, and the fact that, while workmen are

always ready to share the profits, they are neither

able nor willing to share the losses. Further than

this, in many cases, it is neither right nor just that

they should share either the profits or the losses,

since these may be due in great part to causes

entirely beyond their influence or control, and to

which they do not contribute.

To come back to the girls inspecting bicycle balls,

however, the final outcome of all the changes was

that thirty-five girls did the work formerly done by

one hundred and twenty. And that the accuracy of

the work at the higher speed was two-thirds greater than

at the former slow speed.

The good that came to the girls was,

First. That they averaged from 80 to 100 per cent,

higher wages than they formerly received.

Second. Their hours of labor were shortened from

to 8i per day, with a Saturday half holiday. And




they were given four recreation periods properly

distributed through the day, which made overwork-

ing impossible for a healthy girl.

Third. Each girl was made to feel that she was

the object of especial care and interest on the part

of the management, and that if anything went wrong

with her she could always have a helper and teacher

in the

managementto lean

upon.Fourth. All young women should be given two

consecutive days of rest (with pay) each month, to

be taken whenever they may choose. It is myimpression that these girls were given this privilege,

although I am not quite certain on this point.

The benefits which came to the company fromthese changes were:

First. A substantial improvement in the quality

of the product.

Second. A material reduction in the cost of

inspection, in spite of the extra expense involved

in clerk work, teachers, time study, over-inspectors,and in paying higher wages.

Third. That the most friendly relations existed

between the management and the employes, which

rendered labor troubles of any kind or a strike

impossible.

These good results were brought about by manychanges which substituted favorable for unfavor-

able working conditions. It should be appreciated,

however, that the one element which did more than

all of the others was, the careful selection of girls

with quick perception to replace those whose per-




ceptions were slow (the substitution of girls with

a lowpersonal

coefficient for those whosepersonal

coefficient was high) the scientific selection of the

workers.

The illustrations have thus far been purposely

confined to the more elementary types of work, so

that a very strong doubt must still remain as to

whether this kind of

cooperationis desirable in the

case of more intelligent mechanics, that is, in the

case of men who are more capable of generalization,

and who would therefore be more likely, of their

own volition, to choose the more scientific and better

methods. The following illustrations will be given

for the purpose of demonstrating thefact

thatin

the higher classes of work the scientific laws which

are developed are so intricate that the high-priced

mechanic needs (even more than the cheap laborer)

the cooperation of men better educated than him-

self in finding the laws, and then in selecting, develop-

ing, and training him to work in accordance withthese laws. These illustrations should make per-

fectly clear our original proposition that in practi-

cally all of the mechanic arts the science which

underlies each workman's act is so great and amounts

to so much that the workman who is best suited

to actually doing the work is incapable, either throughlack of education or through insufficient mental

capacity, of understanding this science.

A doubt, for instance, will remain hi the minds

perhaps of most readers (in the case of an establish-

ment which manufactures the same machine, year




in and year out, in large quantities, and in which,

therefore, each mechanic repeats the same limited

series of operations over and over again), whether

the ingenuity of each workman and the help which

he from time to time receives from his foreman

will not develop such superior methods and such a

personal dexterity that no scientific study which

could be made would result in a material increase

in efficiency.

A number of years ago a company employing about

three hundred men, which had been manufacturing

the same machine for ten to fifteen years, sent for

us to report as to whether any gain could be made

through the introduction of scientific management.

Their shops had been run for many years under a

good superintendent and with excellent foremen

and workmen, on piece work. The whole establish-

ment was, without doubt, in better physical condi-

tion than the average machine-shop in this country.

The superintendent was distinctly displeased when

told that through the adoption of task management

the output, with the same number of men and

machines, could be more than doubled. He said

that he believed that any such statement was mere

boasting, absolutely false, and instead of inspiring

him withconfidence,

he wasdisgusted

that

anyone

should make such an impudent claim. He, how-

ever, readily assented to the proposition that he

should select any one of the machines whose output

he considered as representing the average of the

shop, and that we should then demonstrate on this




machine that through scientific methods its ouptut

could be more than doubled.The machine selected by him fairly represented

the work of the shop. It had been run for ten or

twelve years past by a first-class mechanic who was

more than equal in his ability to the average work-

men in the establishment. In a shop of this sort,

in which similar machines are made over and over

again, the work is necessarily greatly subdivided,

so that no one man works upon more than a com-

paratively small number of parts during the year.

A careful record was therefore made, in the presence

of both parties, of the time actually taken in finish-

ing each of the parts which this man worked upon.The total time required by him to finish each piece,

as well as the exact speeds and feeds which he took,

were noted, and a record was kept of the time which

he took in setting the work in the machine and remov-

ing it. After obtaining in this way a statement of

what represented a fair average of the work done in

the shop, we applied to this one machine the principles

of scientific management.

By means of four quite elaborate slide-rules, which

have been especially made for the purpose of deter-

mining the all-round capacity of metal-cutting ma-

chines, a careful analysis was made of every element

of this machine in its relation to the work in hand.

Its pulling power at its various speeds, its feeding

capacity, and its proper speeds were determined by

means of the slide-rules, and changes were then

made in the countershaft and driving pulleys so as




to run it at its proper speed. Tools, made of high-

speed steel, and of the proper shapes, were properly

dressed, treated, and ground. (It should be under-

stood, however, that in this case the high-speed

steel which had heretofore been in general use in the

shop was also used in our demonstration.) A large

special slide-rule was then made, by means of which

the exact speeds and feeds were indicated at which

each kind of work could be done in the shortest

possible time in this particular lathe. After pre-

paring in this way so that the workman should

work according to the new method, one after another,

pieces of work were finished in the lathe, correspond-

ingto the work which had been done in our

pre-liminary trials, and the gain in time made through

running the machine according to scientific principles

ranged from two and one-half times the speed in the

slowest instance to nine times the speed in the

highest.

The change from rule-of-thumb management toscientific management involves, however, not only

a study of what is the proper speed for doing the

work and a remodeling of the tools and the imple-

ments in the shop, but also a complete change in

the mental attitude of all the men in the shop

toward their work and toward their employers.The physical improvements in the machines neces-

sary to insure large gains, and the motion study

followed by minute study with a stop-watch of the

time in which each workman should do his work,

can be made comparatively quickly. But the




change in the mental attitude and in the habits

of the three hundred or more workmen can bebrought about only slowly and through a long

series of object-lessons, which finally demonstrates

to each man the great advantage which he will

gain by heartily cooperating in his every-day work

with the men in the management. Within three

years, however, in this shop, the output had beenmore than doubled per man and per machine.

The men had been carefully selected and in almost

all cases promoted from a lower to a higher order

of work, and so instructed by their teachers (the

functional foremen) that they were able to earn

higher wages than ever before. The average increase

in the daily earnings of each man was about 35

per cent., while, at the same time, the sum total of

the wages paid for doing a given amount of work

was lower than before. This increase in the speed

of doing the work, of course, involved a substitution

of the quickest hand methods for the old independentrule-of-thumb methods, and an elaborate analysis

of the hand work done by each man. (By hand

work is meant such work as depends upon the

manual dexterity and speed of a workman, and

which is independent of the work done by the

machine.) The time saved by scientific hand workwas in many cases greater even than that saved in

machine-work.

It seems important to fully explain the reason

why, with the aid of a slide-rule, and after having

studied the art of cutting metals, it was possible




for the scientifically equipped man, who had never

before seen these particular jobs, and who had never

worked on this machine, to do work from two and

one-half to nine times as fast as it had been done

before by a good mechanic who had spent his whole

time for some ten to twelve years in doing this

very work upon this particular machine. In a word,

this was possible because the art of cutting metals

involves a true science of no small magnitude, a

science, in fact, so intricate that it is impossible for

any machinist who is suited to running a lathe year

in and year out either to understand it or to work

according to its laws without the help of men who

have made this theirspecialty.

Men who are un-

familiar with machine-shop work are prone to look

upon the manufacture of each piece as a special

problem, independent of any other kind of machine-

work. They are apt to think, for instance, that the

problems connected with making the parts of an

engine require the especial study, one may sayalmost

the life study, of a set of engine-making mechanics,

and that these problems are entirely different from

those which would be met with in machining lathe

or planer parts. In fact, however, a study of those

elements which are peculiar either to engine parts

or to lathe parts is trifling, compared with the great

study of the art, or science, of cutting metals, upon

a knowledge of which rests the ability to do really

fast machine-work of all kinds.

The real problem is how to remove chips fast from

a casting or a forging, and how to make the piece




smooth and true in the shortest time, and it matters

but little whether the piece being worked upon is

part, say, of a marine engine, a printing-press, or an

automobile. For this reason, the man with the slide-

rule, familiar with the science of cutting metals, who

had never before seen this particular work, was able

completely to distance the skilled mechanic who had

made the parts of this machine his specialty for years.

It is true that whenever intelligent and educated

men find that the responsibility for making progress

in any of the mechanic arts rests with them, instead

of upon the workmen who are actually laboring at

the trade, that they almost invariably start on the

road which leads to the development of a science

where, in the past, has existed mere traditional or

rule-of-thumb knowledge. When men, whose educa-

tion has given them the habit of generalizing and

everywhere looking for laws, find themselves con-

fronted with a multitude of problems, such as exist

in every trade and which have a general similarity

one to another, it is inevitable that they should

try to gather these problems into certain logical

groups, and then search for some general laws or

rules to guide them in their solution. As has been

pointed out, however, the underlying principles of

the management of " initiative and incentive," that

is, the underlying philosophy of this management,

necessarily leaves the solution of all of these problems

in the hands of each individual workman, while

the philosophy of scientific management places their

solution in the hands of the management. The




workman's whole time is each day taken in actually

doing the work with his hands, so that, even if he

had the necessary education and habits of generaliz-

ing in his thought, he lacks the time and the oppor-

tunity for developing these laws, because the study

of even a simple law involving say time study re-

quires the cooperation of two men, the one doing the

work while the other times him with a stop-watch.

And even if the workman were to develop laws

where before existed only rule-of-thumb knowledge,

his personal interest would lead him almost inevita-

bly to keep his discoveries secret, so that he could, by

means of this special knowledge, personally do more

work than other men and so obtainhigher wages.Under scientific management, on the other hand,

it becomes the duty and also the pleasure of those

who are engaged in the management not only to

develop laws to replace rule of thumb, but also to

teach impartially all of the workmen who are under

themthe

quickest waysof

working. Theuseful

results obtained from these laws are always so great

that any company can well afford to pay for the

time and the experiments needed to develop them.1

Thus under scientific management exact scientific

knowledge and methods are everywhere, sooner or

later, sure to replace rule of thumb, whereas underthe old type of management working in accordance

with scientific laws is an impossibility.

The development of the art or science of cutting

metals is an apt illustration of this fact. In the fall

of 1880, about the time that the writer started to




make the experiments above referred to, to determine

what constitutes aproper day's

work for alaborer,

he also obtained the permission of Mr. William

Sellers, the President of the Midvale Steel Com-

pany, to make a series of experiments to determine

what angles and shapes of tools were the best for

cutting steel, and also to try to determine the proper

cutting speedfor steel. At the time that these

experiments were started it was his belief that they

would not last longer than six months, and, in fact,

if it had been known that a longer period than this

would be required, the permission to spend a con-

siderable sum of money in making them would not

have been forthcoming.A 66-inch diameter vertical boring-mill was the

first machine used in making these experiments,

and large locomotive tires, made out of hard

steel of uniform quality, were day after day cut

up into chips in gradually learning how to make,

shape, and use the cutting tools so that they woulddo faster work. At the end of six months sufficient

practical information had been obtained to far more

than repay the cost of materials and wages which

had been expended in experimenting. And yet the

comparatively small number of experiments which

had been made served principally to make it clear

that the actual knowledge attained was but a small

fraction of that which still remained to be developed,

and which was badly needed by us, in our daily at-

tempt to direct and help the machinists in their tasks.

Experiments in this field were carried on, with




occasional interruption, through a period of about

26 years, in the course of which ten different experi-

mental machines were especially fitted up to do

this work. Between 30,000 and 50,000 experi-

ments were carefully recorded, and many other

experiments were made, of which no record was

kept. In studying these laws more than 800,000

pounds

of steel and iron was cut

upinto chips with

the experimental tools, and it is estimated that from

$150,000 to $200,000 was spent in the investigation.

Work of this character is intensely interesting to

any one who has any love for scientific research.

For the purpose of this paper, however, it should be

fully appreciatedthat the motive

powerwhich

keptthese experiments going through many years, and

which supplied the money and the opportunity for

their accomplishment, was not an abstract search

after scientific knowledge, but was the very practical

fact that we lacked the exact information which was

needed every day,in

order to help our machiniststo

dotheir work in the best way and in the quickest time.

All of these experiments were made to enable us

to answer correctly the two questions which face

every machinist each time that he does a piece of

work in a metal-cutting machine, such as a lathe,

planer, drill press, or milling machine. These twoquestions are:

In order to do the work in the quickest time,

At what cutting speed shall I run my machine? and

What feed shaU I use?

They sound so simple that they would appear




to call for merely the trained judgment of any good

mechanic. In fact, however, after working 26 years,it has been found that the answer in every case

involves the solution of an intricate mathematical

problem, in which the effect of twelve independent

variables must be determined.

Each of the twelve following variables has an

important effect upon the answer. The figures

which are given with each of the variables represent

the effect of this element upon the cutting speed.

For example, after the first variable (A) we quote,

"The proportion is as 1 in the case of semi-hardened

steel or chilled iron to 100 in the case of a very soft,

low-carbon steel/' The meaning of this quotationis that soft steel can be cut 100 times as fast as the

hard steel or chilled iron. The ratios which are

given, then, after each of these elements, indicate

the wide range of judgment which practically every

machinist has been called upon to exercise in the

past in determining the best speed at which to runthe machine and the best feed to use.

(A) The quality of the metal which is to be cut;

i.e., its hardness or other qualities which affect the

cutting speed. The proportion is as 1 in the case

of semi-hardened steel or chilled iron to 100 in the

case of very soft, low-carbon steel.

(B) The chemical composition of the steel from

which the tool is made, and the heat treatment of

the tool. The proportion is as 1 in tools made from

tempered carbon steel to 7 in the best high-speed tools.




(C) The thickness of the shaving, or, the thick-

ness of the spiral strip or band of metal which is to

be removed by the tool. The proportion is as 1 with

thickness of shaving ^ of an inch to 3| with thick-

ness of shaving TV of an inch.

(D) The shape or contour of the cutting edge of

the tool. The proportion is as 1 in a thread tool

to 6 in a broad-nosedcutting

tool.

(E) Whether a copious stream of water or other

cooling medium is used on the tool. The proportion

is as 1 for tool running dry to 1.41 for tool cooled

by a copious stream of water.

(F) The depth of the cut. The proportion is as

1 withi-inch depth of cut to 1.36 with 1-inch depth

of cut.

(G) The duration of the cut, i.e., the time which

a tool must last under pressure of the shaving without

being reground. The proportion is as 1 when tool

is to be ground every H hours to 1.20 when tool

is to be ground every 20 minutes.

(H) The lip and clearance angles of the tool.

The proportion is as 1 with lip angle of 68 degrees

to 1.023 with lip angle of 61 degrees.

(J) The elasticity of the work and of the tool on

account of producing chatter. The proportion is

as 1 with tool chattering to 1.15 with tool running

smoothly.

(K) The diameter of the casting or forging which

is being cut.

(L) The pressure of the chip or shaving upon the

cutting surface of the tool.



THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC , MANAGEMENT 109

(M) The pulling power and the speed and feed

changes of the machine.

It may seem preposterous to many people that

it should have required a period of 26 years to

investigate the effect of these twelve variables upon

the cutting speed of metals. To those, however,

who have had personal experience as experimenters,

it will be appreciated that the great difficulty of

the problem lies in the fact that it contains so manyvariable elements. And in fact the great length of

time consumed in making each single experiment

was caused by the difficulty of holding eleven

variables constant and uniform throughout the

experiment, while the effect of the twelfth variable

was being investigated. Holding the eleven variables

constant was far more difficult than the investiga-

tion of the twelfth element.

As, one after another, the effect upon the cutting

speedof each of these variables was

investigated,

in

order that practical use could be made of this knowl-

edge, it was necessary to find a mathematical formula

which expressed in concise form the laws which had

been obtained. As examples of the twelve formulae

which were developed, the three following are given:

P = 45,000

90

11.9

0.2373 +2A

n

F0.665[-^-~'18

'




After these laws had been investigated and the

various formulae whichmathematically expressedthem had been determined, there still remained the

difficult task of how to solve one of these compli-

cated mathematical problems quickly enough to

make this knowledge available for every-day use.

If a good mathematician who had these formulae

before him were toattempt

toget

theproper answer

(i.e., to get the correct cutting speed and feed by

working in the ordinary way) it would take him

from two to six hours, say, to solve a single prob-

lem; far longer to solve the mathematical problem

than would be taken in most cases by the workmen

in doing the whole job in his machine. Thus a taskof considerable magnitude which faced us was that

of finding a quick solution of this problem, and as we

made progress in its solution, the whole problem was

from time to time presented by the writer to one after

another of the noted mathematicians in this country.

They were offered any reasonable fee for a rapid,

practical method to be used in its solution. Some

of these men merely glanced at it; others, for the

sake of being courteous, kept it before them for

some two or three weeks. They all gave us practi-

cally the same answer: that in many cases it was

possible to solve mathematical problems which con-

tained four variables, and in some cases problems

with five or six variables, but that it was manifestly

impossible to solve a problem containing twelve vari-

ables in any other way than by the slow process of

"trial and error."




A quick solution was, however, so much of a

necessityin our

every-daywork of

runningmachine-

shops, that in spite of the small encouragement

received from the mathematicians, we continued at

irregular periods, through a term of fifteen years,

to give a large amount of time searching for a simple

solution. Four or five men at various periods gave

practicallytheir whole time to this

work, and finally,while we were at the Bethlehem Steel Company,the slide-rule was developed which is illustrated on

Folder No. 11 of the paper "On the Art of Cutting

Metals," and is described in detail in the paper

presented by Mr. Carl G. Barth to the American

Society of Mechanical Engineers, entitled "Slide-rules for the Machine-shop, as a part of the Taylor

System of Management" (Vol. XXV of The Transac-

tions of the American Society of Mechanical Engi-

neers). By means of this slide-rule, one of these

intricate problems can be solved in less than a half

minute by any good mechanic, whether he under-stands anything about mathematics or not, thus

making available for every-day, practical use the

years of experimenting on the art of cutting metals.

This is a good illustration of the fact that some

way can always be found of making practical, every-

day use of complicated scientific data, which appearsto be beyond the experience and the range of the

technical training of ordinary practical men. These

slide-rules have been for years in constant daily

use by machinists having no knowledge of mathe-

matics.




A glance at the intricate mathematical formulae

(see page109) which

representthe laws of

cuttingmetals should clearly show the reason why it is

impossible for any machinist, without the aid of

these laws, and who depends upon his personal ex-

perience, correctly to guess at the answer to the two

questions,

What speedshall I use?

What feed shaU I use?

even though he may repeat the same piece of work

many times.

To return to the case of the machinist who had

been working for ten to twelve years in machining

the same pieces over and over again, there wasbut a remote chance in any of the various kinds of

work which this man did that he should hit upon

the one best method of doing each piece of work out

of the hundreds of possible methods which lay before

him. In considering this typical case, it must also

be remembered that the metal-cutting machinesthroughout our machine-shops have practically all

been speeded by their makers by guesswork, and

without the knowledge obtained through a study of

the art of cutting metals. In the machine-shops sys-

tematized by us we have found that there is not one

machine in a hundred which is speeded by its makersat anywhere near the correct cutting speed. So that,

in order to compete with the science of cutting metals,

the machinist, before he could use proper speeds,

would first have to put new pulleys on the counter-

shaft of his machine, and also make in most cases




changes in the shapes and treatment of his tools,

etc. Many of these changes are matters entirely

beyond his control, even if he knows what ought to

be done.

If the reason is clear to the reader why the rule-

of-thumb knowledge obtained by the machinist who

is engaged on repeat work cannot possibly compete

with the true science of cutting metals, it shouldbe even more apparent why the high-class mechanic,

who is called upon to do a great variety of work

from day to day, is even less able to compete with

this science. The high-class mechanic who does a

different kind of work each day, in order to do each

job in the quickest time, would need, in addition to

a thorough knowledge of the art of cutting metals,

a vast knowledge and experience in the quickest wayof doing each kind of hand work. And the reader,

by calling to mind the gain which was made byMr. Gilbreth through his motion and time study

hi laying bricks, will appreciate the great possi-

bilities for quicker methods of doing all kinds of

hand work which lie before every tradesman after

he has the help which comes from a scientific motion

and time study of his work.

For nearly thirty years past, time-study men

connected with the management of machine-shops

have been devoting their whole time to a scientific

motion study, followed by accurate time study, with

a stop-watch, of all of the elements connected with

the machinist's work. When, therefore, the teachers,

who form one section of the management, and who




are cooperating with the working men, are in pos-

session both of the science of cutting metals and of

the equally elaborate motion-study and time-study

science connected with this work, it is not difficult

to appreciate why even the highest class mechanic

is unable to do his best work without constant daily

assistance from his teachers. And if this fact has

been made clear to thereader,

one of the

importantobjects in writing this paper will have been realized.

It is hoped that the illustrations which have been

given make it apparent why scientific management

must inevitably in all cases produce overwhelmingly

greater results, both for the company and its

employes, than can beobtained

withthe

manage-ment of

"initiative and incentive/' And it should

also be clear that these results have been attained,

not through a marked superiority in the mechanism

of one type of management over the mechanism

of another, but rather through the substitution of

one set of underlying principles for a totally differentset of principles, by the substitution of one

philosophy for another philosophy in industrial

management.

To repeat then throughout all of these illustrations,

it will be seen that the useful results have hinged

mainly upon (1) the substitution of a science for theindividual judgment of the workman; (2) the scien-

tific selection and development of the workman, after

each man has been studied, taught, and trained, and

one may say experimented with, instead of allowing

the workmen to select themselves and develop in a




haphazard way; and (3) the intimate cooperation

of the management with the workmen, so that theytogether do the work in accordance with the scientific

laws which have been developed, instead of leaving

the solution of each problem in the hands of the

individual workman. In applying these new prin-

ciples, in place of the old individual effort of each

workman, both sides share almost equally in the

daily performance of each task, the management

doing that part of the work for which they are best

fitted, and the workmen the balance.

It is for the illustration of this philosophy that

this paper has been written, but some of the ele-

ments involved in its general principles should be

further discussed.

The development of a science sounds like a

formidable undertaking, and in fact anything like

a thorough study of a science such as that of cutting

metals necessarily involves many years of work.The science of cutting metals, however, represents

in its complication, and in the time required to

develop it, almost an extreme case in the mechanic

arts. Yet even in this very intricate science, within

a few months after starting, enough knowledge had

been obtained to much more than pay for the workof experimenting. This holds true in the case of

practically all scientific development in the mechanic

arts. The first laws developed for cutting metals

were crude, and contained only a partial knowledge

of the truth, yet this imperfect knowledge was vastly




better than the utter lack of exact information or the

very imperfect rule of thumb which existed before,

and it enabled the workmen, with the help of the

management, to do far quicker and better work.

For example, a very short time was needed to

discover one or two types of tools which, though

imperfect as compared with the shapes developed

years afterward, were superior to all other

shapesand kinds in common use. These tools were adopted

as standard and made possible an immediate increase

in the speed of every machinist who used them.

These types were superseded in a comparatively

short time by still other tools which remained

standard until

theyin their turn made

wayfor later

improvements.1

The science which exists in most of the mechanic

arts is, however, far simpler than the science of

cutting metals. In almost all cases, in fact, the

laws or rules which are developed are so simple that

the average man would hardly dignify them with

1 Time and again the experimenter in the mechanic arts will find him-

self face to face with the problem as to whether he had better make imme-

diate practical use of the knowledge which he has attained, or wait until

some positive finality in his conclusions has been reached. He recognizes

clearly the fact that he has already made some definite progress, but sees

the possibility (even the probability) of still further improvement. Each

particular case must of course be independently considered, but the general

conclusion we have reached is that in most instances it is wise to put one's

conclusions as soon as possible to the rigid test of practical use. The one

indispensable condition for such a test, however, is that the experimenter

shall have full opportunity, coupled with sufficient authority, to insure a

thorough and impartial trial. And this, owing to the almost universal

prejudice in favor of the old, and to the suspicion of the new, is difficult

to get.




the name of a science. In most trades, the science

is developed through a comparatively simple analysisand time study of the movements required by the

workmen to do some small part of his work, and this

study is usually made by a man equipped merely

with a stop-watch and a properly ruled notebook.

Hundreds of these "time-study men" are now

engaged in developing elementary scientific knowl-

edge where before existed only rule of thumb. Even

the motion study of Mr. Gilbreth in bricklaying

(described on pages 77 to 84) involves a much

more elaborate investigation than that which oc-

curs in most cases. The general steps to be taken

in developing a simple law of this class are as

follows:

First. Find, say, 10 or 15 different men (preferably

in as many separate establishments and different

parts of the country) who are especially skilful in

doing the particular work to be analyzed.

Second. Study the exact series of elementary

operations or motions which each of these men

uses in doing the work which is being investigated,

as well as the implements each man uses.

Third. Study with a stop-watch the time required

to make each of these elementary movements and

then select the quickest way of doing each element

of the work.

Fourth. Eliminate all false movements, slow move-

ments, and useless movements.

Fifth. After doing away with all unnecessary

movements, collect into one series the quickest




and best movements as well as the best imple-

ments.

This one new method, involving that series of

motions which can be made quickest and best, is

then substituted in place of the ten or fifteen infe-

rior series which were formerly in use. This best

method becomes standard, and remains standard,

to betaught

first to the teachers(or

functional

foremen) and by them to every workman in the

establishment until it is superseded by a quicker

and better series of movements. In this simple

way one element after another of the science is

developed.

In thesame way

eachtype

ofimplement used

in

a trade is studied. Under the philosophy of the

management of"initiative and incentive" each work-

man is called upon to use his own best judgment,

so as to do the work in the quickest time, and from

this results in all cases a large variety in the shapes

and types of implements which are used for anyspecific purpose. Scientific management requires,

first, a careful investigation of each of the manymodifications of the same implement, developed

under rule of thumb; and second, after a time study

has been made of the speed attainable with each

of these implements, that the good points of several

of them shall be united in a single standard imple-

ment, which will enable the workman to work faster

and with greater ease than he could before. This

one implement, then, is adopted as standard in

place of the many different kinds before in use,




and it remains standard for all workmen to use

until

superseded byan

implementwhich has been

shown, through motion and time study, to be still

better.

With this explanation it will be seen that the

development of a science to replace rule of thumb

is in most cases by no means a formidable under-

taking,and that it can be

accomplished by ordinary,every-day men without any elaborate scientific train-

ing; but that, on the other hand, the successful use

of even the simplest improvement of this kind calls

for records, system, and cooperation where in the

past existed only individual effort.

Thereis

another typeof scientific

investigationwhich has been referred to several times in this

paper, and which should receive special attention,

namely, the accurate study of the motives which

influence men. At first it may appear that this is

a matter for individual observation and judgment,

and is not a proper subject for exact scientific experi-ments. It is true that the laws which result from

experiments of this class, owing to the fact that the

very complex organism the human being is being

experimented with, are subject to a larger number

of exceptions than is the case with laws relating

to material things. And yet laws of this kind,

which apply to a large majority of men, unquestion-

ably exist, and when clearly defined are of great

value as a guide in dealing with men. In develop-

ing these laws, accurate, carefully planned and

executed experiments, extending through a term of




years, have been made, similar in a general way to

the experiments upon various other elements which

have been referred to in this paper.

Perhaps the most important law belonging to

this class, in its relation to scientific management,

is the effect which the task idea has upon the

efficiency of the workman. This, in fact, has

become such an important element of the mechanism

of scientific management, that by a great number of

people scientific management has come to be known

as "task management."

There is absolutely nothing new in the task idea.

Each one of us will remember that in his own case

this idea wasapplied

with

goodresults in his school-

boy days. No efficient teacher would think of giving

a class of students an indefinite lesson to learn. Each

day a definite, clear-cut task is set by the teacher

before each scholar, stating that he must learn just

so much of the subject; and it is only by this means

thatproper, systematic progress

can be madeby

the students. The average boy would go very

slowly if, instead of being given a task, he were told

to do as much as he could. All of us are grown-up

children, and it is equally true that the average

workman will work with the greatest satisfaction,

both to himself and to his employer, when he is

given each day a definite task which he is to perform

in a given time, and which constitutes a proper

day's work for a good workman. This furnishes

the workman with a clear-cut standard, by which he

can throughout the day measure his own progress,




and the accomplishment of which affords him the

greatestsatisfaction.

The writer has described in other papers a series

of experiments made upon workmen, which have

resulted in demonstrating the fact that it is impos-

sible, through any long period of time, to get work-

men to work much harder than the average men

aroundthem,

unlessthey

are assured alarge

and

a permanent increase in their pay. This series of

experiments, however, also proved that plenty of

workmen can be found who are willing to work

at their best speed, provided they are given this

liberal increase in wages. The workman must,

however, be fully assured thatthis

increase beyondthe average is to be permanent. Our experiments

have shown that the exact percentage of increase

required to make a workman work at his highest

speed depends upon the kind of work which the

man is doing.

It is absolutely necessary, then, when workmenare daily given a task which calls for a high rate

of speed on their part, that they should also be

insured the necessary high rate of pay whenever

they are successful. This involves not only fixing

for each man his daily task, but also paying him a

large bonus, or premium, each time that he succeedsin doing his task in the given time. It is difficult

to appreciate in full measure the help which the

proper use of these two elements is to the workman

in elevating him to the highest standard of efficiency

and speed in his trade, and then keeping him there,




unless one has seen first the old plan and afterward

the new tried upon the same man. And in fact

until one has seen similar accurate experiments

made upon various grades of workmen engaged in

doing widely different types of work. The remark-

able and almost uniformly good results from the cor-

rect application of the task and the bonus must be

seen to be appreciated.

These two elements, the task and the bonus

(which, as has been pointed out in previous papers,

can be applied in several ways), constitute two of

the most important elements of the mechanism of

scientific management. They are especially impor-

tant from the fact that they are, as it were, a climax,

demanding before they can be used almost all of

the other elements of the mechanism; such as a

planning department, accurate time study, standard-

ization of methods and implements, a routing system,

the training of functipnal foremen or teachers, and

in

manycases instruction

cards, slide-rules,etc.

(Referred to later in rather more detail on page 129.)

The necessity for systematically teaching work-

men how to work to the best advantage has been

several times referred to. It seems desirable, there-

fore, to explain in rather more detail how this teach-

ing is done. In the case of a machine-shop whichis managed under the modern system, detailed

written instructions as to the best way of doing

each piece of work are prepared in advance, by men

in the planning department. These instructions

represent the combined work of several men in




the planning room, each of whom has his own

specialty, or function. One of them, for instance, is

a specialist on the proper speeds and cutting tools

to be used. He uses the slide-rules which have been

above described as an aid, to guide him in obtaining

proper speeds, etc. Another man analyzes the best

and quickest motions to be made by the workman in

setting the work up in the machine and removing it,

etc. Still a third, through the time-study records

which have been accumulated, makes out a time-

table giving the proper speed for doing each element

of the work. The directions of all of these men,

however, are written on a single instruction card, or

sheet.

These men of necessity spend most of their time in

the planning department, because they must be close

to the records and data which they continually use

in their work, and because this work requires the

use of a desk and freedom from interruption. Human

nature is such, however, that many of the workmen,if left to themselves, would pay but little attention

to their written instructions. It is necessary, there-

fore, to provide teachers (called functional fore-

men) to see that the workmen both understand

and carry out these written instructions.

Under functional management, the old-fashioned

single foreman is superseded by eight different men,

each one of whom has his own special duties, and

these men, acting as the agents for the planning

department (see paragraph 234 to 245 of the paper en-

titled "-Shop Management"); are the expert teachers,




who are at all times in the shop, helping and

directingthe workmen.

Beingeach one chosen for

his knowledge and personal skill in his specialty,

they are able not only to tell the workman what he

should do, but in case of necessity they do the work

themselves in the presence of the workman, so as

to show him not only the best but also the quickest

methods.One of these teachers (called the inspector) sees

to it that he understands the drawings and instruc-

tions for doing the work. He teaches him how to

do work of the right quality; how to make it fine

and exact where it should be fine, and rough and

quick where accuracy is not required, the onebeing just as important for success as the other.

The second teacher (the gang boss) shows him how

to set up the job in his machine, and teaches him to

make all of his personal motions in the quickest and

best way. The third (the speed boss) sees that the

machine is run at the best speed and that the proper

tool is used in the particular way which will enable

the machine to finish its product in the shortest

possible time. In addition to the assistance given

by these teachers, the workman receives orders and

help from four other men; from the "repair boss"

as to the adjustment, cleanliness, and general

care of his machine, belting, etc.; from the "time

clerk," as to everything relating to his pay and to

proper written reports and returns; from the "route

clerk," as to the order in which he does his work and

as to the movement of the work from one part of




the shop to another; and, in case a workman gets

into any trouble with any of his various bosses, the"disciplinarian" interviews him.

It must be understood, of course, that all work-

men engaged on the same kind of work do not require

the same amount of individual teaching and atten-

tion from the functional foremen. The men who are

new at a given operation naturally require far moreteaching and watching than those who have been a

long time at the same kind of jobs.

Now, when through all of this teaching and this

minute instruction the work is apparently made so

smooth and easy for the workman, the first impres-

sion is that this all tends to make him a mere autom-

aton, a wooden man. As the workmen frequently

say when they first come under this system, "Why,I am not allowed to think or move without some

one interfering or doing it for me!" The same criti-

cism and objection, however, can be raised against

all other modern subdivision of labor. It does not

follow, for example, that the modern surgeon is anymore narrow or wooden a man than the early settler

of this country. The frontiersman, however, had to

be not only a surgeon, but also an architect, house-

builder, lumberman, farmer, soldier, and doctor, and

he had to settle his law cases with a gun. You would

hardly say that the life of the modern surgeon is

any more narrowing, or that he is more of a wooden

man than the frontiersman. The many problems

to be met and solved by the surgeon are just

as intricate and difficult and as developing and




broadening in their way as were those of the fron-

tiersman.

And it should be remembered that the training

of the surgeon has been almost identical in type

with the teaching and training which is given to

the workman under scientific management. The

surgeon, all through his early years, is under the

closest

supervisionof more

experienced men,who

show him in the minutest way how each element

of his work is best done. They provide him with

the finest implements, each one of which has been

the subject of special study and development, and

then insist upon his using each of these implements

inthe very

bestway.

All of thisteaching, however,

in no way narrows him. On the contrary he is

quickly given the very best knowledge of his pre-

decessors; and, provided (as he is, right from the

start) with standard implements and methods which

represent the best knowledge of the world up to

date, he is able to use his own originality and inge-

nuity to make real additions to the world's knowl-

edge, instead of reinventing things which are old.

In a similar way the workman who is cooperating

with his many teachers under scientific management

has an opportunity to develop which is at least as

good as and generally better than that which he hadwhen the whole problem was "up to him" and he

did his work entirely unaided.

If it were true that the workman would develop

into a larger and finer man without all of this teach-

ing, and without the help of the laws which have




been formulated for doing his particular job, then

it would follow that the young man who now comesto college to have the help of a teacher in mathe-

matics, physics, chemistry, Latin, Greek, etc., would

do better to study these things unaided and by

himself. The only difference in the two cases is

that students come to their teachers, while from the

nature of the work done by the mechanic underscientific management, the teachers must go to him.

What really happens is that, with the aid of the

science which is invariably developed, and through

the instructions from his teachers, each workman

of a given intellectual capacity is enabled to do a

much higher, more interesting, and finally more

developing and more profitable kind of work than

he was before able to do. The laborer who before

was unable to do anything beyond, perhaps, shoveling

and wheeling dirt from place to place, or carrying

the work from one part of the shop to another, is

in many cases taught to do the more elementary

machinist's work, accompanied by the agreeable sur-

roundings and the interesting variety and higher

wages which go with the machinist's trade. The

cheap machinist or helper, who before was able to

run perhaps merely a drill press, is taught to do the

more intricate and higher priced lathe and planer

work, whiletfye highly skilled and more intelligent

machinists become functional foremen and teachers.

And so on, right up the line.

It may seem that with scientific management

there is not the same incentive for the workman to




use his ingenuity in devising new and better methods

of doing the work, as well as in improving his imple-

ments, that there is with the old type of manage-ment. It is true that with scientific managementthe workman is not allowed to use whatever imple-

ments and methods he sees fit hi the daily practise

of his work. Every encouragement, however, should

be given him to suggest improvements, both in

methods and in implements. And whenever a work-

man proposes an improvement, it should be the

policy of the management to make a careful analysis

of the new method, and if necessary conduct a series

of experiments to determine accurately the relative

merit of the newsuggestion

and of the old standard.

And whenever the new method is found to be

markedly superior to the old, it should be adopted

as the standard for the whole establishment. The

workman should be given the full credit for the

improvement, and should be paid a cash premiumas a

rewardfor his

ingenuity. In this way the trueinitiative of the workmen is better attained under

scientific management than under the old individual

plan.

The history of the development of scientific

management up to date, however, calls for a word

of warning. The mechanism of management mustnot be mistaken for its essence, or underlying

philosophy. Precisely the same mechanism will in

one case produce disastrous results and in another

the most beneficent. The same mechanism which

will produce the finest results when made to serve




the underlying principles of scientific management,will lead to failure and disaster if

accompanied bythe wrong spirit in those who are using it. Hun-

dreds of people have already mistaken the mechan-

ism of this system for its essence. Messrs. Gantt,

Barth, and the writer have presented papers to the

American Society of Mechanical Engineers on the

subject of scientific management. In these papersthe mechanism which is used has been described at

some length. As elements of this mechanism maybe cited:

Time study, with the implements and methods

for properly making it.

Functional or divided foremanship and its

superiority to the old-fashioned single foreman.

The standardization of all tools and implements

used in the trades, and also of the acts or move-

ments of workmen for each class of work.

The desirability of a planning room or depart-

ment.The "exception principle" in management.The use of slide-rules and similar time-saving

implements.

Instruction cards for the workman.

The task idea in management, accompanied by

a large bonus for the successful performance of the

task.

The "differential rate."

Mnemonic systems for classifying manufactured

products as well as implements used hi manu-

facturing.




A routing system.

Modern cost system, etc., etc.

These are, however, merely the elements or details

of the mechanism of management. Scientific man-

agement, in its essence, consists of a certain philoso-

phy, which results, as before stated, in a combination

of the four great underlying principles of manage-

ment :l

When, however, the elements of this mechanism,

such as time study, functional foremanship, etc.,

are used without being accompanied by the true

philosophy of management, the results are in manycases disastrous. And, unfortunately, even when

men who are thoroughly hi sympathy with the

principles of scientific management undertake to

change too rapidly from the old type to the new,

without heeding the warnings of those who have

had years of experience in making this change,

they frequently meet with serious troubles, and

sometimes with strikes, followed

byfailure.

The writer, in his paper on "Shop Management,"

has called especial attention to the risks which

managers run in attempting to change rapidly from

the old to the new management. In many cases,

however, this warning has not been heeded. The

physical changeswhich are

needed,the actual

time study which has to be made, the standardiza-

tion of all implements connected with the work,

1First. The development of a true science. Second. The scientific

selection of the workman. Third. His scientific education and develop-

ment. Fourth. Intimate friendly cooperation between the management

and the men.




the necessity for individually studying each machine

and placing it in perfect order,all

take time, butthe faster these elements of the work are studied

and improved, the better for the undertaking. On

the other hand, the really great problem involved

in a change from the management of"initiative

and incentive"

to scientific management consists in

a complete revolution in the mental attitude andthe habits of all of those engaged in the management,

as well of the workmen. And this change can be

brought about only gradually and through the presen-

tation of many object-lessons to the workman, which,

together with the teaching which he receives,

thoroughly convince him of the superiority of thenew over the old way of doing the work. This

change in the mental attitude of the workman

imperatively demands time. It is impossible to

hurry it beyond a certain speed. The writer has

over and over again warned those who contemplated

making this change that it was a matter, even in a

simple establishment, of from two to three years,

and that in some cases it requires from four to five

years.

The first few changes which affect the workmen

should be made exceedingly slowly, and only one

workman at a time should be dealt with at the

start. Until this single man has been thoroughly

convinced that a great gain has come to him from

the new method, no further change should be made.

Then one man after another should be tactfully

changed over. After passing the point at which




from one-fourth to one-third of the men in the employof the company have been

changedfrom the old to

the new, very rapid progress can be made, because

at about this time there is, generally, a complete

revolution in the public opinion of the whole estab-

lishment and practically all of the workmen who

are working under the old system become desir-

ous to share hi the benefits whichthey

seehave

been received by those working under the new

plan.

Inasmuch as the writer has personally retired from

the business of introducing this system of manage-

ment (that is, from all work done in return for any

money compensation), he does not hesitate again to

emphasize the fact that those companies are indeed

fortunate who can secure the services of experts

who have had the necessary practical experience in

introducing scientific management, and who have

made a special study of its principles. It is not

enough that a man should have been a managerin an establishment which is run under the new

principles. The man who undertakes to direct the

steps to be taken in changing from the old to the

new (particularly in any establishment doing elab-

orate work) must have had personal experience in

overcoming the especial difficulties which are always

met with, and which are peculiar to this period of

transition. It is for this reason that the writer

expects to devote the rest of his life chiefly to try-

ing to help those who wish to take up this work as

their profession, and to advising the managers and




owners of companies in general as to the steps which

they should take in making this change.As a warning to those who contemplate adopting

scientific management, the following instance is

given. Several men who lacked the extended experi-

ence which is required to change without danger

of strikes, or without interference with the success

of the business, from the management of

"

initia-

tive and incentive" to scientific management, at-

tempted rapidly to increase the output in quite an

elaborate establishment, employing between three

thousand and four thousand men. Those who un-

dertook to make this change were men of unusual

ability, and were at the same time enthusiasts andI think had the interests of the workmen truly at

heart. They were, however, warned by the writer,

before starting, that they must go exceedingly slowly,

and that the work of making the change in this estab-

lishment could not be done in less than from three to

five years. This warning they entirely disregarded.

They evidently believed that by using much of the

mechanism of scientific management, in combination

with the principles of the management of "initiative

and incentive," instead of with the principles of

scientific management, that they could do, in a

year or two, what had been proved in the past to

require at least double this time. The knowledge

obtained from accurate time study, for example, is

a powerful implement, and can be used, in one case

to promote harmony between the workmen and the

management, by gradually educating, training, and




leading the workmen into new and better methods

of doing the work, or, in the other case, it may be

used more or less as a club to drive the workmen

into doing a larger day's work for approximately

the same pay that they received in the past. Unfor-

tunately the men who had charge of this work did

not take the time and the trouble required to train

functional foremen, or teachers, who were fitted

gradually to lead and educate the workmen. They

attempted, through the old-style foreman, armed with

his new weapon (accurate time study), to drive the

workmen, against their wishes, and without much

increase in pay, to work much harder, instead of

gradually teaching

and leading them toward new

methods, and convincing them through object-

lessons that task management means for them some-

what harder work, but also far greater prosperity.

The result of all this disregard of fundamental prin-

ciples was a series of strikes, followed by the down-

fall of the

men who attemptedto make the

change,and by a return to conditions throughout the estab-

lishment far worse than those which existed before

the effort was made.

This instance is cited as an object-lesson of the

futility of using the mechanism of the new manage-

ment while leaving out its essence, and also of tryingto shorten a necessarily long operation in entire

disregard of past experience. It should be empha-

sized that the men who undertook this work were

both able and earnest, and that failure was not due

to lack of ability on their part, but to their under-




taking to do the impossible. These particular men

will notagain

make a similarmistake, and

it is

hoped that their experience may act as a warning

to others.

In this connection, however, it is proper to again

state that during the thirty years that we have been

engaged in introducing scientific management there

has not been a single strike from those who wereworking in accordance with its principles, even

during the critical period when the change was

being made from the old to the new. If proper

methods are used by men who have had experience

in this work, there is absolutely no danger from

strikes or other troubles.

The writer would again insist that in no case

should the managers of an establishment, the work

of which is elaborate, undertake to change from the

old to the new type unless the directors of the com-

pany fully understand and believe in the funda-

mental principles of scientific management and unless

they appreciate all that is involved in making this

change, particularly the time required, and unless

they want scientific management greatly.

Doubtless some of those who are especially in-

terested in working men will complain because under

scientific management the workman, when he is

shown how to do twice as much work as he formerly

did, is not paid twice his former wages, while others

who are more interested in the dividends than the

workmen will complain that under this system the

men receive much higher wages than they did before.




It does seem grossly unjust when the bare state-

ment is made that the competent pig-iron handler,

for instance, who has been so trained that he piles

3A times as much iron as the incompetent man

formerly did, should receive an increase of only

60 per cent, in wages.

It is not fair, however, to form any final judgment

until all of the elements in the case have been con-

sidered. At the first glance we see only two parties

to the transaction, the workmen and their employers.

We overlook the third great party, the whole people,

the consumers, who buy the product of the first

two and who ultimately pay both the wages of the

workmen and the profits of the employers.

The rights of the people are therefore greater than

those of either employer or employe. And this

third great party should be given its proper share of

any gain. In fact, a glance at industrial history

shows that in the end the whole people receive the

greater partof the benefit

comingfrom industrial

improvements. In the past hundred years, for

example, the greatest factor tending toward increas-

ing the output, and thereby the prosperity of the

civilized world, has been the introduction of machin-

ery to replace hand labor. And without doubt the

greatest gain throughthis

change has cometo the

whole people the consumer.

Through short periods, especially in the case of

patented apparatus, the dividends of those who have

introduced new machinery have been greatly in-

creased, and in many cases, though unfortunately




not universally, the employes have obtained materi-

allyhigher wages,

shorter hours, and better

workingconditions. But in the end the major part of the

gain has gone to the whole people.

And this result will follow the introduction of

scientific management just as surely as it has the

introduction of machinery.

To return to the case of thepig-iron

handler. Wemust assume, then, that the larger part of the gain

which has come from his great increase in output

will in the end go to the people in the form of cheaper

pig-iron. And before deciding upon how the balance

is to be divided between the workmen and the

employer,as to what is

justand fair

compensationfor the man who does the piling and what should be

left for the company as profit, we must look at the

matter from all sides.

First. As we have before stated, the pig-iron

handler is not an extraordinary man difficult to find,

he is merely a man more or less of the type of the ox,

heavy both mentally and physically.

Second. The work which this man does tires him

no more than any healthy normal laborer is tired

by a proper day's work. (If this man is overtired

by his work, then the task has been wrongly set and

this is as far as possible from the object of scientific

management.)

Third. It was not due to this man's initiative

or originality that he did his big day's work, but to

the knowledge of the science of pig-iron handling

developed and taught him by some one else.




Fourth. It is just and fair that men of the same

general grade (when their all-round capacities are

considered) should be paid about the same wages

when they are all working to the best of their abilities.

(It would be grossly unjust to other laborers, for

instance, to pay this man 3TV as high wages as other

men of his general grade receive for an honest full

day's work.)

Fifth. As is explained (page 74), the 60 per cent,

increase in pay which he received was not the result

of an arbitrary judgment of a foreman or superin-

tendent, it was the result of a long series of careful

experiments impartially made to determine what

compensation is really for the man's true and best

interest when all things are considered.

Thus we see that the pig-iron handler with his

60 per cent, increase in wages is not an object for

pity but rather a subject for congratulation.

After all, however, facts are in many cases more

convincingthan

opinions

or theories, and it is a

significant fact that those workmen who have come

under this system during the past thirty years have

invariably been satisfied with the increase in pay

which they have received, while their employers have

been equally pleased with their increase in dividends.

The writer is one of those who believes that more

and more will the third party (the whole people), as

it becomes acquainted with the true facts, insist

that justice shall be done to all three parties. It

will demand the largest efficiency from both em-

ployers and employes. It will no longer tolerate




knowledge so collected, analyzed, grouped, and classi-

fied into laws and rules that it constitutes a science;

accompanied by a complete change in the mental

attitude of the working men as well as of those on

the side of the management, toward each other,

and toward their respective duties and responsi-

bilities. Also, a new division of the duties between

the two sides and intimate, friendly cooperation

to an extent that is impossible under the philosophy

of the old management. And even all of this in

many cases could not exist without the help of

mechanisms which have been gradually developed.

It is no single element, but rather this whole

combination, that constitutes scientific

manage-ment, which may be summarized as:

Science, not rule of thumb.

Harmony, not discord.

Cooperation, not individualism.

Maximum output, in place of restricted output.

The developmentof each

manto his

greatestefficiency and prosperity.

The writer wishes to again state that: "The time

is fast going by for the great personal or individual

achievement of any one man standing alone and with-

out the help of those around him. And the time is

coming when all great things will be done by thattype of cooperation in which each man performs the

function for which he is best suited, each man pre-

serves his own individuality and is supreme in his

particular function, and each man at the same time

loses none of his originality and proper personal



THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT Ul

initiative, and yet is controlled by and must work

harmoniously with

manyother men.

7 '

The examples given above of the increase in out-

put realized under the new management fairly

represent the gain which is possible. They do not

represent extraordinary or exceptional cases, and

have been selected from among thousands of similar

illustrations whichmight

have beengiven.

Let us now examine the good which would follow

the general adoption of these principles.

The larger profit would come to the whole world

in general.

The greatest material gain which those of the pres-

ent generation have over past generations has comefrom the fact that the average man in this generation,

with a given expenditure of effort, is producing two

times, three times, even four times as much of those

things that are of use to man as it was possible for

the average man in the past to produce. This

increase in the productivity of human effort is, of

course, due to many causes, besides the increase in

the personal dexterity of the man. It is due to

the discovery of steam and electricity, to the intro-

duction of machinery, to inventions, great and small,

and to the progress in science and education. But

from whatever cause this increase in productivity

has come, it is to the greater productivity of each

individual that the whole country owes its greater

prosperity.

Those who are afraid that a large increase in the

productivity of each workman will throw other men




out of work, should realize that the one element more

than any other which differentiates civilized from

uncivilized countries prosperous from poverty-

stricken peoples is that the average man in the

one is five or six times as productive as the other.

It is also a fact that the chief cause for the large per-

centage of the unemployed in England (perhaps the

most virile nation in the world), is that the workmen

of England, more than in any other civilized country,

are deliberately restricting their output because they

are possessed by the fallacy that it is against their

best interest for each man to work as hard as he can.

The general adoption of scientific management

would readily in the future double the productivity

of the average man engaged in industrial work.

Think of what this means to the whole country.

Think of the increase, both in the necessities and

luxuries of life, which becomes available for the whole

country, of the possibility of shortening the hours

of labor when this is

desirable,and of the increased

opportunities for education, culture, and recreation

which this implies. But while the whole world

would profit by this increase in production, the

manufacturer and the workman will be far more

interested in the especial local gain that comes

to

them and to the people immediately around them.Scientific management will mean, for the employers

and the workmen who adopt it and particularly

for those who adopt it first the elimination of

almost all causes for dispute and disagreement

between them. What constitutes a fair day's work




will be a question for scientific investigation, instead

of a subject to be bargained and haggled over.

Soldiering will cease because the object for soldier-

ing will no longer exist. The great increase in wages

which accompanies this type of management will

largely eliminate the wage question as a source of

dispute. But more than all other causes, the close,

intimatecooperation,

the constant personal con-

tact between the two sides, will tend to diminish

friction and discontent. It is difficult for two

people whose interests are the same, and who work

side by side in accomplishing the same object, all

day long, to keep up a quarrel.

The low cost of

productionwhich

accompaniesa

doubling of the output will enable the companies

who adopt this management, particularly those

who adopt it first, to compete far better than they

were able to before, and this will so enlarge their

markets that their men will have almost constant

work even in dull times, and that they will earnlarger profits at all times.

This means increase in prosperity and diminution

in poverty, not only for their men but for the whole

community immediately around them.

As one of the elements incident to this great gain

in output, each workman has been systematicallytrained to his highest state of efficiency, and has

been taught to do a higher class of work than he

was able to do under the old types of management;

and at the same time he has acquired a friendly

mental attitude toward his employers and his whole




working conditions, whereas before a considerable

part of his time was spent in criticism, suspicious

watchfulness, and sometimes in open warfare. Thisdirect gain to all of those working under the system

is without doubt the most important single element

in the whole problem.

Is not the realization of results such as these of

far more importance than the solution of most of

the problems which are now agitating both the

English and American peoples? And is it not the

duty of those who are acquainted with these facts,

to exert themselves to make the whole community

realize this importance?

The author is constantly in receipt of letters asking for a list

of the companies who are working under scientific management. It

would be highly improper to furnish any one with a list of this kind. Manyof those companies who have introduced scientific management would seri-

ously object to answering the letters which would be showered upon them

if such a list were given out. On the other hand, there are certain com-

panies who are willing to take the trouble to answer such letters.

Toall

of those who are sufficiently interestedin scientific

manage-ment, the writer would most heartily extend an invitation to come to his

house when they are in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. He will be

glad to show them the details of scientific management as it is practised

in several establishments in Philadelphia. Inasmuch as the greater part

of the writer's time is given up to forwarding the cause of scientific manage-

ment, he regards visits of this sort as a privilege, rather than as an intrusion.

Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Taylor

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